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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   33036 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023

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I know it's beating a dead horse at this point, but this whole Prigozhin situation made one fact crystal clear: American dissident right (and "anti-nato left" by extension) is extremely solipsistic, much more than other factions in American culture war. Just take a look at some of those takes which are prevalent among this crowd

/images/16875993326015117.webp

/images/16875993329050043.webp

/images/16875993330050533.webp

Essentially, their model of the world looks like: here we are, honest god-abiding Americans, and then there are "elites" — Biden, Hillary, DNC, Podesta, Bill Gates, World Economic Forum. How then do you view something that lies outside your usual experience and ideology? If you are dumb, you deny it altogether:

"Ukraine War is fake, all of it is CGI, Zelensky and Hunter Biden siphon gajillions dollars from American taxpayers to buy mansions in Bahamas"

For those people Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, Finns, Prigozhin, Zaluzhny, Macron, Scholz, ... do not exist.

If you are smarter, you align yourself with perceived enemies of the elites: Putin, Xi, Orban, .... You say things like:

even as someone that is entirely anti-nato to the point I would turncoat in a second if i had a chance to damage the alliance

totally oblivious of cases like this

https://zona.media/online/2023/06/22/sko

being a regular occurrence in Russia, when a girl is sent to prison for putting anti-war slogans on price tags in a shopping mall. Of course they'll have prepared a long list of grievances with "elites" that are intended to persuade you that whatever happens in the US is much worse than repressions in Russia or China. And, sure enough, all of it "glownigger propaganda" anyway.

You might say: "Well, I don't care about anti-Putin Russians, unfortunate pro-Putin Russians who became victims of the regime, neutral Russians, Ukrainians, Uighurs, Tibetans, Taiwanese, ... all I care is that my children don't get castrated and turned into trannies". Fair enough. But then please don't take a high moral ground. You are just as evil as "elites".

Whatever patience I had with American "anti-establishment" right-wingers, it ended. I guess Hanania is the only one I keep reading/listening at this point.

This is a pretty aggressive post toward what appears to be your outgroup, which I would probably let slide if it brought some light, but... it doesn't seem to do that. I'm actually confused as to what your policy positions even are on these matters, much less why you hold the positions you do. It's okay to criticize or complain but only in the context of substantial ideas. Just targeting a group to lambast them is insufficient here.

this whole Prigozhin situation made one fact crystal clear: American dissident right (and "anti-nato left" by extension) is extremely solipsistic

I noticed exactly the same thing in this context about the Hungarian leftist opposition, and I'm sure in this they aren't one bit different from any leftist political community in the West which considers itself the underdog, for whatever reason (and I guess this describes most of them for sure). By coincidence I was offline the whole day yesterday, and by the time I decided to check online reports on this today, the whole rebellion was already in a fizzled-out state for hours. Out of curiosity I checked out a bunch of online platforms where this sort hangs out, and I saw an enormous number of braindead takes, divorced from all political reality, unvarnished glee at the supposed prospect of a civil war in a country with thousands of nuclear warheads, expressions of the firm belief that Putler will be toppled, overtly optimistic conjecture about the expected consequences in Europe, lousy memes expressing various combinations of this, pretty much zero understanding of the likely motivations of Wagner members etc. And when the whole leftist mirage collapsed in a matter of hours, there's pretty much nothing left on their part but example upon example of pathetic copium.

pathetic copium

I don't understand this attitude of many pro-Ru people. Here is my 2-minute paint meme to illustrate my attitude toward this (add it to the list of "lousy memes"):

/images/16877176476755807.webp

But I can understand "pro-nato" people, in their naïveté they thought it might bring the end to this senseless war a bit closer.

Don't do this. This is not rdrama and this is not an argument.

I can't speak for everyone, but I at least would prefer you expressed yourself in words instead of (contemptuous) memes.

The 'dissident right' does not refer to catturd2, who is a relatively normal conservative twitter person. Dissident right refers to like, moldbug or bap. Although the broad statement about the DR is still mostly true.

"These tweets are dumb" isn't a good toplevel post (unless you start there and go somewhere else interesting), almost all tweets are dumb.

It might be if these tweets are dumb in a way that reflects a typical dumb thinking pattern. Which, unfortunately, it kinda does. I mean, I can get the catturd2's thing - ok, you don't care about anything that happens outside the border, fine (though what "proof" do you expect? All the proofs are known, and all the fixes are in, that's what you're getting, no refunds). But the rest is just dumb reflective "all this is lies" automated contrarianism. Very popular among certain circles, because it's low effort but makes you look stunning and brave. At least the opposite side has to dress up (and some even cut off their dicks for it) - these ones are as low effort as one can be.

I'll answer to "it's not representative; it's just some dumb tweets" in this post, as it was point of @anti-dan, @Gaashk and some others' replies.

Are people like Tucker Carlson, Max Blumenthal, Trump Junior, 'America First' caucus, Jordan 'Do you even know about Holomodor' Peterson et al — are they all nobodies? They use the same talking points when talking about events abroad, displaying the same solipsism demonstrated in those screenshots I took when checking replies to some tweets and top level 4chan pol posts. They ARE representative.

catturd2, who is a relatively normal conservative twitter person

Well... shit. I had better opinion of "normal conservatives". I still prefer to think of him as a fringe pushed by Elon's algorithm and frequent endorsements.

I don't follow Tucker Carlson, Max Blumenthal, Trump Junior, or "'America First' caucus" very closely, so am not sure what they said about it, and don't see any specific thing they said here, so it's hard to judge. It would be a better post if it had started with "Tucker Carlson said [wrong thing], at [link]this is why it was wrong, this is how it is destructive."

I do follow Jordan Peterson on and off -- more off since he's started mostly interviewing campaigning politicians and alternative currency salesmen. The last time I heard him discuss Ukraine, this past spring, he was talking to some American representative (glancing at the descriptions, maybe it was Senator Mike Lee), who was basically just explaining why he saw it as in America's interests to get involved and the situation from the perspective of the American establishment, which Peterson did not really question or push back against.

There is a good breakdown of his arguments

https://old.reddit.com/r/enoughpetersonspam/comments/12fvhhs/axis_jordan_and_senator_vatnik_on_ukraine/

Tucker Carlson and Jordan Peterson and Max Blumenthal are not on the 'dissident right' either. If you want to criticize the populist side of conservatism (which blumenthal isn't), then say that! Also, if Tucker and Peterson (mainstream conservatives) are saying this, then lead with their statements, not catturd2, a 21 like post, and a random 4chan post.

The actual DR's (twitter) opinions are somehow dumber, though, and confirm your thesis of solipsism. From eg BAP's twitter account:

If an army group rebelled and occupied London, arresting all Cabinet members, MPs, and Fleet Street journalists, would a significant number of people oppose it? Would they fight to keep the regime believing they are in control as a "democracy"?

This is just the populist / democratic "the real people are behind our niche ideas!" thing, which is dumb when a leftist does it, but especially dumb when someone who claims to be anti-democracy does it.

I'm not sure where to find long-form written 'dissident right' takes on ukraine, tbh (other than moldbug, who has different but more coherent ideas).

Also seen on twitter, this, on how J6 vs Prigozhin shows Russia handled coups better than the US and Russia is stable. What?

The Wagner saga was so confusing to westerners because life of greatness is no longer imaginable to most. We presume that men must be objects of political forces and historical script; never subjects acting freely in time and space, open to consequences. Such vitality is alien.. Lmao? Military coups in less-developed countries are ... not unfamiliar for westerners, and are well considered as 'political forces'.

All of it more than confirms the 'only thinking about the US' thesis

This is just the populist / democratic "the real people are behind our niche ideas!" thing, which is dumb when a leftist does it, but especially dumb when someone who claims to be anti-democracy does it.

I read this as claiming that the people aren't invested enough in democracy to defend it, that is to say, concerned about the practicality of overthrowing a democratic government. Not about the people actually supporting the ideas, but anti-democratics not caring about the people supporting ideas seems reasonably consistent.

Military coups in less-developed countries are ... not unfamiliar for westerners, and are well considered as 'political forces'.

While political coups are quite understood, that a single private actor can become a sufficiently powerful political force is a bit jarring to some.

claiming that the people aren't invested enough in democracy to defend it

Yeah, but they are invested enough to defend against an actual "nazi coup". Look at how upset people were about J6, which was more circus than coup? This includes the military (who these people call woke).

that a single private actor can become a sufficiently powerful political force is a bit jarring to some.

I don't think it is? A warlord in an african country isn't a new idea.

Yeah, but they are invested enough to defend against an actual "nazi coup". Look at how upset people were about J6, which was more circus than coup?

Are they? Getting upset is very different than standing up and defending. What are you seeing that makes you think the average person would get involved if an actual nazi coup showed up on the horizon?

A warlord in an african country isn't a new idea.

Sure, but people in the west like to feel like they're fundamentally superior to africa, that's not... the same thing. At least emotionally.

The literal average person won't defend democracy unless they're drafted, for the same reason the average Ukrainian didn't until they were drafted. But the average American does believe in democracy, and vaguely idolizes defending it against nazis. And there is a substantial minority of people who will both provide either technical assistance or military assistance the defense of democracy against Nazis (again consider the entire US military). The idea that the US is so low-energy they'll just ironically laugh and go back to work if there's a reactionary coup today isn't true whatsoever.

Sure, but people in the west like to feel like they're fundamentally superior to africa, that's not... the same thing. At least emotionally.

I don't think the idea of dictators who exercise personal power in eastern europe is really unfamiliar either. Like, honestly, how is he different from Putin from the perspective of the US public? Maybe I'm wrong, can you link some tweets/posts of people who that tweet describes?

Whatever patience I had with American "anti-establishment" right-wingers, it ended. I guess Hanania is the only one I keep reading/listening at this point.

Your evidence for making this wide sweeping conclusion is frog avatar anons? At least when someone on the right weakmans they cite a Harvard professor or some MSNBC host. Putin can be bad, but not caring about that much at all is perfectly fine. And dunking on Biden and co for having a Putin fetish is appropriate comedy.

Why do you care about those people on internet?

Any reasonable person understands that it is morally wrong for one country to attack another that has never threatened you.

Then one can say – forget about morals, the power decides the outcome. Turns out Russia is not as powerful as we thought and they got stuck in Ukraine and are losing positions every day, thanks for western support.

A lot of people just suffer from denialism. The fog of war doesn't allow us to see clearly what is going on in every detail but in a nutshell the reality is clear. Russians might or might not manage to keep Donbas and/or the Crimea but the rest of Ukraine has remained an independent country and that is not going to change.

People in the western countries have free access to all the information and most of us see it clearly.

For a lot of Russians it is harder to see in this way because they suffer from collective delusions that Ukraine is a bad country (nazis or not) that does not deserve to remain independent and Russia is going to take over Ukraine and make it a glorious part of Russia.

  1. On balance Russia is wrong. But the cartoon cut out of “Russia bad” is over the top.

  2. There was on-going anti Russian people attacks in the Donbas. If there were a community of Americans living in Mexico that came under attack I imagine Uncle Sam might have something to say.

  3. The 2014 coup and Ukraine buddying up to Nato suggests Ukraine was in some sense threatening Russia’s interests (the same way the US flipped out re Cuba and the USSR and the same way the US will flip out over PRC and Cuba).

  4. Now I do think these issues, while influencing Russia, were not the principal reasons behind the Russian war (ie imperialism). So on balance I think Russia is the bad actor. But it isn’t the carton some people pretend.

If there were a community of Americans living in Mexico that came under attack I imagine Uncle Sam might have something to say.

American citizens regularly get kidnapped by cartels in Mexico.

There was on-going anti Russian people attacks in the Donbas. If there were a community of Americans living in Mexico that came under attack I imagine Uncle Sam might have something to say.

There were indeed, e.g.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2015_Mariupol_rocket_attack

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volnovakha_bus_attack

(please read the articles)

The 2014 coup

It wasn't a coup. If you make an inflammatory statement — provide the evidence.

The legitimately elected leader of the country was chased away by men with guns. How is it not a coup?

You can argue that it was a good and necessary coup, but I can't see how you escape framing the undemocratic and disorderly ouster of Yanukovych as anything other than a coup.

The legitimately elected leader of the country was chased away by men with guns. How is it not a coup?

Do you have a video of him being chased away by men with guns? He was voted out by Rada.

"Coup" is a charged word, and is used to paint the protest, and post-Maidan government by extension, as illegitimate. So why not "Revolution"? Because it is reserved for events like American revolution, and pro-Ru Americans, despite them siding with Russians and Chinese, still venerate the Founding Myth?

The American revolution wasn't a coup, since it didn't topple the previous government but separated from it. George didn't have to flee to another country.

The US constitution, there's a coup.

Is it based on any academically accepted definition? Because then French Revolution isn't a revolution either.

My french constitutional lexicon says that a coup d'état is the overthrow of a power through illegal, usually violent, means by someone invested with authority.

Louis was overthrown, Georges wasn't. The ARW was secession, not a coup.

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Wikipedia is far from a trusted source especially on politically relevant topics. So nope won’t read it. I’ve read enough to understand the Donbas is complex and yes there were anti Russian actions occurring. Again doesn’t make Russia correct but it complies the narrative.

As for the 2014 coup, I think most people are aware. Just because you like the freedom fighters doesn’t mean it isn’t a coup. Moreover, a cursory understanding of how the cia historically operated means any degree of uprising that “supports” globalhomo is in part astroturfed.

Wikipedia is far from a trusted source especially on politically relevant topics.

That's a nice way to deflect. The cases when Russians bombed Russian population in Ukraine controlled cities and locations are well documented. Those two are the best documented though. I also recommend to read materials from the International Court (Russia has its representatives there defending themselves, so it's not in abscence)

https://www.icj-cij.org/case/166/oral-proceedings

If you read quality source, you'd understand there is nothing deeply complex about it.

As for the 2014 coup, I think most people are aware.

"Everyone understand" is a fallacy (building consensus), and it's a bad way to introduce garbage arguments about CIA and "globalhomo". Please build a good argument for why it was a coup, but taking into account events like disappearance of Janukovich, Supreme Council of Ukraine (Rada) vote for removing him, shooting at the protestors, introduction of anti-Constitutional laws on the 16th of Jan and so on?

Please build a good argument for why it was a coup, but taking into account events like disappearance of Janukovich, Supreme Council of Ukraine (Rada) vote for removing him, shooting at the protestors, introduction of anti-Constitutional laws on the 16th of Jan and so on?

Even in the west it's called "the Maidan Revolution", no?

All of the things you list might be good reasons to have a coup, but there's no reason not to call a spade a spade.

Coup d'etat

The sudden overthrow of a government, differing from a revolution by being carried out by a small group of people who replace only the leading figures.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=FijiV_ISw2A

If you consider up to a million people in Kyiv alone a "small group", then it's a coup, sure.

I think the difference is important. Pro-Ru like to point that it was "undemocratic", and that it was instigated by CIA. While the first claim can still be supported (Janukovich wasn't deposed in an election), it is weakened by the demonstration of popular support of ousting of Janukovich. Even in Donetsk:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=d76wFtOzfds

If we are judging how popular or democratic things are by demonstration of public support Trump creamed Biden.

We generally think voting is the appropriate method.

More comments

  1. Russia is bad for attacking Ukraine unprovoked.

  2. Even the war criminal Prigozhin who recently gained a lot of popularity in Russia said that it was a lie. Ukrainians were fighting clandestine Russian forces in Donbas.

  3. Threatening “Russia's interests” or threatening Russia? Very different things.

  4. Russian attack on Ukraine was a mistake even from the point of view of Russian supremacy because it was destined to fail. It has weakened Russia considerably and they are only themselves to blame for it. Now the question is why so many seemingly smart people don't see this? Even the baddies like Prigozhin have realized this. I can kind of understand why so many people in Russia have this delusion. The human nature of conformity forces them to adapt to follow even misguided leaders. But why many people in the west believe this nonsense that somehow Russia is going to win in Ukraine?

Russians might or might not manage to keep Donbas and/or the Crimea but the rest of Ukraine has remained an independent country and that is not going to change.

When Putin said all he wanted was Crimea and the Donbas, people called him a liar, an imperialist, and a murdering conqueror. If the bear stands down and leaves Ukraine alone once it’s finished biting off those two chunks, as he stated, I won’t be surprised.

If Belarus is next for a weird contested election, I expect to see a repeat of wars and rumors of wars.

He already said he won't relinquish control of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions of Ukraine. He literally compared himself with Peter the Great. I think calling him an imperialist and a conqueror is fair, as he essentially said it about himself in his own words.

He just wanted Crimea and the Donbass so badly he sent a quick strike and later riot police towards Kiev?

Maybe. Most of Ukraine's soldiers were around the Donbass region at the time, and well dug in - it could be reasoned that it would be quicker and less bloody to try and cut them off, or even decapitate the government, and then negotiate for Donbass/Crimea from a position of strength. That seems pretty doubtful, though. Given Russia's actions and rhetoric at the time, it looked more like they planned on totally overrunning the country.

We can only really speculate, at this point, on what Putin would have done if he had won.

If a stranger forces entry with a shotgun and a bowie knife, and you succesfully shoot him, the default assumption isn't that he only wanted to raid your fridge. So too with Putin and Ukraine, I'd say.

Yes, Putin is a liar, an imperialist and a murdering conqueror. People have characterized him fairly.

Putin is a war criminal.

I don't see how the latter follows in any way from the former.

Or are those all separate claims?

I didn't understand your comparisons either. So, I just emphasized the basic truth.

What comparisons?

I demand you explain your reasoning. You can't just go and state things. This isn't /pol/.

I mean, this is going into circles. Your write something very unclear based on some references or comparisons that I am not familiar with, I don't understand them. You then say – what comparisons?

Maybe you should reflect on what DuplexFields wrote and try to rewrite it so that it makes sense. I cannot provide reasonings of things that I cannot understand.

I haven't written anything but simple questions about your own utterances. If you don't understand your own claims and refuse to explain them, why post here?

All I'm asking is that when you call world leaders epithets, you actually give a detailed reasoning why. I don't think that's incomprehensible.

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But then please don't take a high moral ground. You are just as evil as "elites".

What is so wrong about caring about one's own interests, as opposed to the interests of others? The 'elites' are the ones going out and randomly, incompetently wrecking various countries or behaving incredibly recklessly. Standing aside while others fight is sound policy. We should not get involved in other people's problems. Firstly, it's expensive and makes enemies. Secondly, we don't necessarily understand what's going on and can't necessarily fix it. Thirdly, it benefits special interests and socializes losses. Everyone is poorer due to energy shortages or debt incurred by these wars - the benefits go to military contractors, bureaucracies, favoured NGOs and PMCs.

Just consider the last 20 years of military adventurism. What did we get? A pro-Iranian (wrecked) Iraq, wrecked Libya, wrecked Syria, wrecked Afghanistan. All this came with a huge price tag and a long list of new enemies. The military establishment is not very smart, nor are they good at winning. They are very good at wrecking and lying.

This is what happens when we listen to the 'moral high ground, think of the civil society' camp. We get wrecked countries and 12-figure bills. Why should Ukraine be any different? Long, expensive conflict which doesn't improve our position at all. The realist school has warned and warned that getting involved in Ukraine was a bad idea, that it would make the Russians very angry, that they'd rather wreck the country than let it fall into our hands. They've been totally vindicated. Russia is wrecking Ukraine, missile by missile and refugee by refugee.

How hard would it be to... do nothing? If we had done nothing for the last 20 years we'd be richer, safer and stronger.

People will go on and on about how we have to stand up and support the 'international rules based order' - the biggest crock of shit. What are the rules (is there any clear law anywhere)? Who wrote them? Who agreed to them? Apparently it's OK when we invade or bomb countries, yet it's illegal for Russia to invade its neighbours? This is arbitrary nonsense.

Let's support our interests, which are not present in Ukraine. There's nothing we need in Ukraine, there's no need to get hysterical about it. Ukraine is a core Russian interest and a peripheral interest for the West as a whole. Foreign policy should distinguish between core and peripheral interests.

They've been totally vindicated. Russia is wrecking Ukraine, missile by missile and refugee by refugee.

No, it hasn't been. A lot of people demolished arguments of Mearsheimer. An example of critique:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=XXmwyyKcBLk

https://youtube.com/watch?v=wjU-ve4Pn4k

I won't be repeating them, as it's just exhausting.

That doesn't demolish anyone, they just repeat tired old myths like the 'security guarantees' that Ukraine was given in exchange for transferring nukes they didn't control (what is a permissive action link?) to Russia. People don't even bother looking at what the agreement says, they don't bother reading the wikipedia page, they just lie! Ukraine was not given any security guarantee:

Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they "should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used".

Seeking security council action is meaningless if it's against a veto-power.

You get your arguments from youtubers like 'Spaghetti Kozak Media & Heavy Industries LLC', I get mine from published authors (who predicted this whole affair years in advance). These people don't understand Mearsheimer, I doubt they've read any of his work. They grossly mischaracterize what he's saying: 'Europe is a poker chip'. At no point did he say this, it doesn't even have any meaning! Is Kraut talking about France, Germany, the EU? Who knows! At no point do they even repeat Mearsheimer's thesis from directly relevant books like 'The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities'.

It's also deeply ironic for these people to cast themselves in the moral high ground over the cold realists when the idiotic, reflexive interventionism they support has gotten an enormous number of people killed.

You get your arguments from youtubers like 'Spaghetti Kozak Media & Heavy Industries LLC', I get mine from published authors

Argument from Authority. I thought academics can be trusted, see where they lead us with lockdowns!

But Spaghetti Kozak Media demonstrated much closer knowledge of Ukrainian affairs than Mearsheimer did — as someone who comes from this part of the world I can attest to this. I watched Mearsheimer's debate with Sykorsky — the dude is just ignorant. He did not predict anything — in fact, he said Putin won't attack, because he would be too stupid otherwise.

Ukraine was not given any security guarantee

I don't remember when the US intervened into the war directly? They follow the spirit and the letter of the Memorandum by "providing assistance to Ukraine", and Russia broke the memorandum.

In Russian and Ukrainian versions of the documents, it is not "assurances", but "guarantees":

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/United_Nations_Treaty_Collection._Volume_3007._I-52241.pdf

page 7: Меморандум о гарантиях. Signed by American and British representatives as well. So please, study the matter a bit more, before opining. And do not trust some academics, they spew garbage, be it Fauci or Mearsheimer.

But Spaghetti Kozak Media demonstrated much closer knowledge of Ukrainian affairs than Mearsheimer did — as someone who comes from this part of the world I can attest to this. I watched Mearsheimer's debate with Sykorsky — the dude is just ignorant. He did not predict anything — in fact, he said Putin won't attack, because he would be too stupid otherwise.

There's a reason people publish books (with footnotes and references) and don't just hold debates. Books and articles let people develop nuanced ideas over text, thinking things through carefully. Mearsheimer's record on Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria is impressive. Furthermore, he says that it would be hard for Russia to conquer Ukraine:

Besides, even if it wanted to, Russia lacks the capability to easily conquer and annex eastern Ukraine, much less the entire country. Roughly 15 million people—one-third of Ukraine’s population—live between the Dnieper River, which bisects the country, and the Russian border. An overwhelming majority of those people want to remain part of Ukraine and would surely resist a Russian occupation. Furthermore, Russia’s mediocre army, which shows few signs of turning into a modern Wehrmacht, would have little chance of pacifying all of Ukraine. Moscow is also poorly positioned to pay for a costly occupation; its weak economy would suffer even more in the face of the resulting sanctions.

They can continue their current policy, which will exacerbate hostilities with Russia and devastate Ukraine in the process—a scenario in which everyone would come out a loser

https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-the-Ukraine-Crisis-Is.pdf

Mearsheimer predicted exactly what happened, he said that Russia lacked the power to conquer Ukraine. He said that, if the current Western policy continued, Ukraine would be devastated, Russia-West relations would be more hostile (which clearly implies some kind of invasion or use of force). 100% correct and he was writing in 2014. And you say he's ignorant?

please, study the matter a bit more, before opining.

You first. Ukraine was not given a security guarantee. There's no debate about this, it's black and white. Read the very link you posted. Read it carefully, unlike the youtuber you cited who thought there was a security guarantee.

'Reaffirm their commitment to seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine'.

There was no security guarantee. And it has equal validity in all languages, linguistics are irrelevant.

There's no debate about this, it's black and white. Read the very link you posted.

Yep, page 7: Меморандум о гарантиях

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/гарантия

Now, in the articles it is not said that the US will intervene on behalf of Ukraine if it is attacked. It’s says about assistance. Which the US provided so far.

While Mearsheimer talks about NATO being a threat to Russia, I can't take him seriously. Here, read this, maybe you are unfamiliar with this concept:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction

He correctly predicted that Russia is a threat to Ukraine, but he incorrectly identified the reason for why it is, and thus his arguments do not hold. They are a threat because Putin, and a large part of Russian political class, views Russians and Ukrainians one people that should be reunited, Anschluss-style. NATO has no place in this picture, aside from being a potential deterrent.

Mearsheimer predicted exactly what happened

No, he said "Putin is too smart to try that".

Now, in the articles it is not said that the US will intervene on behalf of Ukraine if it is attacked. It’s says about assistance. Which the US provided so far.

There's a distinction between a security guarantee and security assistance. You are saying assistance, assistance, assistance... I am saying that there was no guarantee, contra your youtuber. These are critical distinctions! These are the reasons we have books, papers, written by people who know a thing or two about what they're talking about as opposed to just regurgitating talking points. Mearsheimer knows things that youtubers do not - hence why he was right about Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan and Ukraine.

No, he said "Putin is too smart to try that".

When and in what context? It's quite clear from the text that Mearsheimer writes that Putin might try to invade. Mearsheimer said that Putin lacks the power to conquer all of Ukraine, not that he wouldn't invade.

Again and again Mearsheimer states that Ukraine is a core strategic interest for Russia, that they'll withstand considerable suffering to ensure NATO does not have a presence there. It logically follows that Mearsheimer thinks that Russia would invade Ukraine, as I said above. For example, here's a quote:

"The Ukraine crisis points up the other reason sanctions regularly fail in the face of political or strategic calculations. For Russia, Ukraine is a core strategic interest, and the West’s efforts to peel Ukraine away from Moscow’s orbit and incorporate it into Western institutions is categorically unacceptable. From Putin’s perspective, the policy of the United States and its European allies is a threat to Russia’s survival. This viewpoint motivates Russia to go to enormous lengths to prevent Ukraine from joining the West."

If Mearsheimer said something like 'Putin would not invade with a goal to conquer and permanently annex all Ukraine' then that fits with the rest of what he's written and published. If he says 'Putin would not invade Ukraine in any circumstances' then that fits with what you're arguing about Mearsheimer being ignorant.

NATO has no place in this picture, aside from being a potential deterrent.

If this was the case, then Putin would've done something about it earlier and people would've written about it pre-2014. Where are the scholars talking about Putin's desire to conquer Ukraine pre-2008? You don't find it suspicious that the Russo-Georgian war happens immediately after the US says Ukraine and Georgia will join the alliance eventually? How convenient that Putin becomes a Russian pan-nationalist precisely when NATO enlargement gets closest to Russia.

Mearsheimer knows things that youtubers do not

Mearsheimer has demonstrated that he doesn't have expertise on Eastern Europe many times in his speeches and debates, there is no need to read all the corpus of a crank, it is enough just to listen to his speeches.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4

Like here he is denying that "Putin is bent on creating a greater Russia" (29 minute slide). Demonstrably false.

33 minute slide: he claims that the west's response "so far" is "doubling down". Now, it was 7 years ago. The US started to provide significant assistance to Ukraine, and sanctioned some Russians only after Malaysia airliner was being shot down by Russians (as confirmed by the International Court). How the West should have reacted? Especially, when Russia denied any involvement?

39 minute slide: he claims that Ukraine should guarantee language rights for minorities. Well, if Mearsheimer knew anything about Ukraine, he would have known about

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/the-truth-behind-ukraine-s-language-policy/

Kivalov-Kolesnichenko language law. Just a bunch of nonsense from an old crank.

If this was the case, then Putin would've done something about it earlier and people would've written about it pre-2014.

No, why do you think that? He tried to pull Belarus and Ukraine into "Union State". It's a well-known fact, maybe not to you, or Mearsheimer.

How convenient that Putin becomes a Russian pan-nationalist precisely when NATO enlargement gets closest to Russia.

As suspicious as when a robber tries to rob a bank the day before a new security measures are introduced. The bank security must have provoked him! Russia didn't wait 2008 to try to encroach on Crimea when Ukraine was under pro-Ru president:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Tuzla_Island_conflict

And he did say in his lecture:

If you really want to wreck Russia, what you should do is to encourage it to try to conquer Ukraine. Putin is much too smart to try that

So, I guess, a win for the US? As that's exactly what happened, that is true.

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Kraut in his 40 minute video makes a critique of realism but of 20th century variety not school of offensive realism to which Mearsheimer belongs to.

And it is 90 minutes btw

The general points are the same: ignoring agency of independent minor power (Poland, Ukraine, Baltic States etc.); hypoagency of Russia and hyperagency of the US; ignoring ideologies, political developments and personal attitudes of politicians and populations.

And it is easy demonstrable — Mearsheimer made laughable claims about Putin not being imperialist and not being driven by ideology (despite the latter comparing himself to Peter the Great, claiming that Ukraine is historically Russian, citing Ilyin — a Russian fascist philosopher, writing articles about Ukraine historically being part of Russia). But people still cite him, even after this year and a half. It's baffling.

EU, US and Russia can all end this war, Ukraine can't and it can't fight alone. That's the problem with being a minor power, you are not independent. And of course politicians aren't homo geopoliticus so rational models will not always work in real life.

Putin isn't an imperialist, he isn't based right winger or actually communist shill, he is cleptocrat who wants to stay in power, that's all. His Russian nationalist rhetoric coexist with his speeches about multinational Russian nation and how he is Dagestani, Chechen, Tatar. He talks about evil Lenin who created Ukraine and then praises Soviet Union, he calls maidan a coup but then recognizes supposedly illegitimate government. Putin's words contradict themselves every other week. Look at his actions, his revealed preferences and you will see that he cares about being Peter the Great only when he heeds popularity boost.

Real Russian nationalist fascist like Strelkov wouldn't stop at Crimea in 2014, wouldn't arrest all Russian nationalist organizations, wouldn't walk out of Kazakhstan, wouldn't propose the peace deal that was proposed in April. You can read Anatoly Karlin Twitter for more proofs in more details, like the size of military budget, non-committal atlitude to the supposed fight against evil nazi Ukraine and Satanist NATO. In Russia Russian nationalists that support the regime are generally laughed at for all the aforementioned reasons.

it can't fight alone

They can — just instead of sparsely populated Azov steppe battles will happen in Poltava (pop. 280k), or Zaporizhzhia proper (pop. around 700k). They repelled Russians from Kyiv back when American assistance was meager.

Putin isn't an imperialist, he isn't based right winger or actually communist shill, he is cleptocrat who wants to stay in power, that's all.

He is a kleptocrat, alright, but calling him non-ideological is just demonstrably false at this point. You could have had doubts back in 2012, not now. Karlin is just as delusional as ever, just instead of "Kiev will fall in 2 days" he swung in the opposite direction.

In Russia Russian nationalists that support the regime are generally laughed at for all the aforementioned reasons.

I lived in Russia for quite some time, I know Russian, so I think I have some understanding of what Russian nationalists really think. Are you Russian?

non-committal atlitude to the supposed fight against evil nazi Ukraine and Satanist NATO

And Nazi Germany didn't go full war time economy until 1942.

People can be ideologically-driven psychopaths, and ineffective at the same time. And I assure you — if Strelkov came to power, economic efficiency would just drop. Because he would fire Nabiulina, actually competent banker, and would put someone like Glazyev in her stead, who is even less competent than Erdogan when it comes to monetary policy. But hey, at least he hates hohols.

They can — just instead of sparsely populated Azov steppe battles will happen in Poltava (pop. 280k), or Zaporizhzhia proper (pop. around 700k). They repelled Russians from Kyiv back when American assistance was meager.

Kremlins shifted their course to freezing the conflict at the approximately current borders after their failed push to Kiev that was meant to facilitate regime change. And without western assistance they would be successful as they were 9 years ago. And American assistance was not meager if you look at it in all years from 2014.

He is a kleptocrat, alright, but calling him non-ideological is just demonstrably false at this point. You could have had doubts back in 2012, not now. Karlin is just as delusional as ever, just instead of "Kiev will fall in 2 days" he swung in the opposite direction.

But policies of his government that consists from his cronies aren't ideological nor specifically Russian nationalist. We can look at many aspects: immigration, internal federal policy, cultural and just politics where nationalist parties and organizations were outright banned. Even if he is in some way sincerely ideological it doesn't matter, because it doesn't affect his mishmash rhetoric and policy.

I lived in Russia for quite some time, I know Russian, so I think I have some understanding of what Russian nationalists really think. Are you Russian?

Yes, I am Russian and live in Russia currently. While Russian nationalist that are pro-Putin exist they are unknown to the mostly apolitical wide public and treated with disdain by politically active youth.

And Nazi Germany didn't go full war time economy until 1942.

People can be ideologically-driven psychopaths, and ineffective at the same time. And I assure you — if Strelkov came to power, economic efficiency would just drop. Because he would fire Nabiulina, actually competent banker, and would put someone like Glazyev in her stead, who is even less competent than Erdogan when it comes to monetary policy. But hey, at least he hates hohols.

There is wide gulf between full war-time economy proposed by Strelkov and current Vietnam level spending. Girkin wants to "liberate" whole Ukraine, with smaller goals kremlins need less commitment but still higher than current one. I am talking about not inefficiency but policies that are going against Russian nationalist or imperialist belief supposedly held by Putin.

And American assistance was not meager if you look at it in all years from 2014.

Just find an article from Khodaryonok saying back before the invasion that it was absolutely meager. A large-scale war isn't fought with a hundred Javelins or Stingers. Operation Unifier or several hundreds of millions dollars sent to Ukraine over the years weren't the decisive factor either.

And without western assistance they would be successful as they were 9 years ago.

They weren't that successful 9 years ago either — not taking Mariupol in 2015 even after Russian MOD sending their units into Ukraine.

I didn't say Putin is a nationalist, I said he was ideologically driven. Thinking that he is a new Ekaterina the Great. Ekaterina wasn't a nationalist, she accepted Muslims and European colonists in her realm. Patrushev, Kiriyenko — those are ideologues too. The rest are lèche-culs. But Göring too was more interested in his personal enrichment and aggrandizement. In regimes like that not everyone is Hitler or Himmler.

There is wide gulf between full war-time economy proposed by Strelkov and current Vietnam level spending.

Just find articles on Meduza, Verstka or Mediazona on how military factories work right now — in 3 shifts, without possibility of taking vacations. How expenses, especially the closed part of the budget grew. If you don't see something, or if you still can enjoy your morning latte somewhere in café in Moscow — doesn't mean the system doesn't make efforts. People dance in night clubs in Kyiv too, you know.

Ukraine is different. It is a European country that is being fast-tracked into the EU. Those who try to attack my friends, will get harshly punished.

The rules are clear. Just because someone somewhere broke them and didn't get punished is not an excuse.

Ukraine is different. It is a European country that is being fast-tracked into the EU.

In other words they are getting fast tracked into diversity, ESG ratings and rule by wall street. Ukraine has remained Ukraine after centuries of Russian rule. Berlin is turning into a third world city 30 years after "freedom". The EU elites hate everything that is actually European. They want to turn it into a souless consumerist platform for Amazon and Netflix.

Are you from the EU?

Unfortunately.

The wall street does not rule the world or countries. They certainly do lobbying but it is not a dictatorship and many smart people constantly suggest ways how to improve the global financial system.

Noah Smith have made very good comparisons about the economy of the post-soviet countries – the countries which have joined the EU have developed faster than those which didn't. If you look from the point of view of freedoms, you will see the same results.

Ukraine has lost a lot of potential by failing to join the EU sooner. Better late than never.

You have the causation exactly backwards (just like Noah Smith). The countries that joined the EU were the countries that had already transitioned better.

That's not really true. At some point Russia's GDP was even higher than Latvia's. Belarus is also relatively stable and more prosperous than Ukraine.

The EU membership boosted the growth of their members quite considerably.

Of course, you could say that readiness to join the EU was also a big impetus for necessary reforms. Turkey was going that way too. But since they clearly decided not to join the EU, their growth stalled.

It isn’t about size of gdp or gdp per capita. It was a question of how they privatized. Ukraine and Russia privatization scheme was corrupt beyond belief. Other areas (eg Poland) implemented schemes that would lead to long term growth.

There was not much of a pie to divide at the start. All countries started being very poor but some countries received new investments and others not.

Specifically in Ukraine oligarhs resisted establishing links with the EU exactly because they feared that new investments will make their wealth to become proportionally much smaller (hence, losing power). If Ukraine had joined the EU despite inefficient privatization, it would have been much more developed today.

On the other hand, the countries that remained economically related to Russia, the risk of western investments was too high and they remained poor.

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What rules are clear? Can you name them or provide a link to them? None of this is in the UN Charter by the way - the Security Council decides these things.

The rule that you are not allowed to occupy other countries without a good reason.

The rule is enforced by most powerful countries on this planet, namely, NATO countries who supply Ukraine sufficient weapons so that they can fight against Russian occupying forces.

When did that rule come about, and where is it written?

The rule is enforced by most powerful countries on this planet, namely, NATO countries who supply Ukraine sufficient weapons so that they can fight against Russian occupying forces.

Will this rule be enforced the next time a NATO country feels like occupying another country (probably Russia)? Or is this a rule that only exists for weak, non-NATO countries? If NATO is supplanted by another power, like China, will this rule no longer apply and will countries be allowed to occupy each other again?

You can never predict the future...

And you all are probably better historians than me anyway.

So the 'rules based order' has nothing to do with coherent, consistent law, it's just an excuse to do whatever NATO wants. You must agree that the choice of judge for 'good reasons' is all-important here. Otherwise we'd all be cheering on the SMO like the Economist did in 1999. They wouldn't print the following: 'Bringing the Ukrainians to heel! A massive bombing attack opens the door to peace'.

Onto my second point, what is the point of NATO influencing Ukraine? Since there's no moral/legal reason, there must be a strategic reason. Ukraine has some agricultural land, some gas, the old T-80 production line - yet that's not really a game-changer for anyone. The bulk of the strategic value is in the Black Sea ports, Crimea, gas pipelines, bases relevant to weakening Russia. Ukraine matters more to Russia than it does to the West, in the same way that Mexico or Cuba matters more to the US than to China. Proximity is important. The obvious reason to seek Ukrainian and Georgian membership in NATO is to pressure and surround Russia. It's similarly obvious that Russia is angered by this - they made it abundantly clear that they were very angry about this for years and years.

We should not go around antagonizing major powers with enough nuclear weapons to sweep us all into the dustbin of history, not unless core strategic interests are threatened. We should not have undermined coherent, non-arbitrary ideas like 'don't engage in wars without Security Council consensus' - others can play that game too.

Maybe Russia should have offered Ukraine a more appealing prospect than the EU.

Getting mad because other countries have the right to self determination is an interesting take.

We should not have undermined coherent, non-arbitrary ideas like 'don't engage in wars without Security Council consensus' - others can play that game too.

The country invading a sovereign nation is the one engaging in war.

So the 'rules based order' has nothing to do with coherent, consistent law, it's just an excuse to do whatever NATO wants.

I mean sorta? Might makes right never went away, but the most powerful country generally wants a rules based system most of the time, and so one exists. With just enough exceptions and post hoc rationalization to prevent two nuclear armed powers from coming to direct conflict.

'Do what I say or I'll shoot you' is a rule, but it's not generally what we mean by a rules-based international order, and if America has no justification for it's hegemony other than force, you shouldn't be surprised when others seek to use force to challenge that hegemony.

you shouldn't be surprised when others seek to use force to challenge that hegemony

I'm not, it's exactly what I expect. Then again, I would expect it even if the US had an additional justification, such is the nature of power. Additionally I expect the rules based system to only last as long as US hegemony does.

But I also expect what comes next to be considered much worse, regardless of how much people talk now about America being evil. Despite getting to set the rules (and, admittedly, getting quite a few carve outs in its favor), Pax Americana has been good for basically everyone, save possibly the Russian elite.

I would say that about 30-35 million people that can be added to the global community that is engaged in improving human society is a big deal. It is not only about advancement of technologies because this can be done also in dictatorships like China but about the fabric of the society that is beneficial for all of us. The society is constantly facing different problems (social networks, lockdowns, lack of democracy etc.) that we need more people to deal with these problems in a positively progressive way instead of heavy-handed manner.

The biggest problem with dictatorship is that it is less effective. Putin started a senseless war that hurt Russia a lot. In Western democracies people can also make wrong choices but it is self correcting and it is better in long term development.

China is planning to build their base on Cuba, and Russia increasing their presence there. I guess, a special military operation Bay of Pigs style is totally justified, as it is posited by the so called "realists". And you will support it, right? Ukraine is in the sphere of Russia, Cuba is in the sphere of the US?

https://www.reuters.com/world/china-post-spy-facility-cuba-off-southeastern-us-wsj-2023-06-08/

Yes, its permissible to go in on Cuba. It wouldn't be the first or even the tenth time the US interfered in the sovereignty of Latin American nations.

By meddling in the sphere of influence of another country, you are risking instability and conflict - whether that's Cuba or Ukraine. This is particularly true when it comes to a imperialist nation prone to belligerency, like the United States. China should not unnecessarily antagonize the US like this, and if this leads to war, I think they could be partly responsible.

Of course that isn’t what the poster said. He didn’t say he supported the Russian war. He said NATO antagonized Russia. That doesn’t imply war is the correct response.

The rule that you are not allowed to occupy other countries without a good reason.

The rule is enforced by most powerful countries on this planet, namely, NATO countries who supply Ukraine sufficient weapons so that they can fight against Russian occupying forces.

Are you truly not blind to the absurdity of your statement? ?

"without a good reason" is doing heavy weightlifting here :)

Obviously Russians are sure they also have a good reason, like every invader ever.

I'm becoming partial to the 'non-aggression principle' whose primitive, naive form is espoused by libertarians. (see included image)

/images/16882233458842037.webp

What is absurd in the statement that Ukraine successfully pushed away Russian attack to most of their country?

As I said Ukraine might or might not recover Donbas and/or the Crimea but they successfully defended their capital from falling into Russia's hands. Now with the western help their army has only gotten stronger and I expect that they will liberate at least some of the territories currently occupied by Russians.

As George Soros said back in 2004:

If we re-elect Bush, we are endorsing the Bush doctrine. And then we are off to a vicious circle of escalating violence in the world. And I think, you know, terrorism, counter-terrorism, it's a very scary spectacle to me. If we reject him, then we are effectively rejecting the Bush doctrine. Because he was elected on a platform of a more humble foreign policy. Then we can go back to a more humble foreign policy. And treat this episode as an aberration. We have to pay a heavy price. You know, 100 billion dollars a year in Iraq. We can't get out of that. We mustn't get out of it. But still, we can then regain the confidence of the world, and our rightful place as leaders of the world, working to make the world a better place.

I think it deserves a top-level post in itself: one of the reasons American right started to hate Soros was that he opposed interventionist policies of Bush. Now Tucker and co, who supported invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, declare people like him to be warmongers.

Yeah, sure.

Soros, whose institutes have been at the forefront of funding revolutions since.. well, probably longer than most of posters here have been alive, is for a "more humble foreign policy".

Right.

Even a stopped clock may be right once in a while.

But OK, I'll push back on a more object-level, without sneering. On forefront of which revolutions was he? Velvet revolution? Singing Revolution in Baltic countries? Orange Revolution? Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan? Euromaidan? Rose Revolution in Georgia? Because it's a nice narrative concocted by Russian propaganda, Orban and pro-Ru types, about CIA or Soros, but it just doesn't hold and betrays both ignorance and conspiratorial thinking.

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Soros, whose institutes have been at the forefront of funding revolutions since..

Good for him for developing democracy in those countries by funding libraries, scientists and free media. Unfortunately, despite all efforts Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria slide back into corruption and their elites keep pocketing EU money, of course Soros is a good scapegoat for their failures. Gullible people there love this Soros shit, makes them feel smart.

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I know it's beating a dead horse at this point, but this whole Prigozhin situation made one fact crystal clear: American dissident right (and "anti-nato left" by extension) is extremely solipsistic, much more than other factions in American culture war. Just take a look at some of those takes which are prevalent among this crowd

This war-as-a-distraction meme dates back to the 90s, such as wag the dog, and is not just the fringe-right. Conspiratorial thinking is a major tradition/aspect of American politics. Americans in general have a low opinions of its leaders. But our leaders haven't done much to burnish this reputation, so it's understandable why so many feel this way. Even if elites are not directly coordinating, they share a similar worldview nonetheless. The us vs. them framing is not entirely wrong, but i think both sides overestimate how well the opposing side is able to coordinate.

Despite spending more time here than is healthy, none of this context looks familiar. What are you referencing? An insular Twitter fight?

Dissident right isn’t a monolith but I do get annoyed at the Sacks part of it which is anti war. I prime example of “dissident right” is this sub itself which many would probably consider “dissident right” is on net I believe pro-war.

Well, there are two different things going on there.

These:

/images/16875993326015117.webp

/images/16875993329050043.webp

/images/16875993330050533.webp

are people who are just not smart enough / knowledgeable enough to understand that actual 10D chess moves are rare in politics. A look at history would tell you that, but most people do not read history. They do not understand that Occam's Razor, the idea that the simpler explanation is generally more likely to be correct, applies here. Some of them might also have various kinds of paranoia-inducing mental issues that cloud their understanding. Such people are everywhere on /pol/.

This:

even as someone that is entirely anti-nato to the point I would turncoat in a second if i had a chance to damage the alliance

is a person who might also belong to the first group above, but might not. It is possible for someone to be smart enough to understand what I described above and yet be fervently anti-NATO for one reason or another. Personally I care about liberalism, but obviously not everyone does. And even a liberal might hate NATO for nationalist reasons, or whatever.

The dissident right is made up of a small upper echelon of smart people and a huge mass of stupid people who are basically just cannon fodder that belongs to whoever can persuade them. That mass of stupid people are the Qanoners and so on. The left has its own variation of this, although it is not perfectly symmeterical.

are people who are just not smart enough / knowledgeable enough to understand that actual 10D chess moves are rare in politics.

Twenty years ago the top ivies had an incredible reputation in the general public. Ivy League professors were magical wizards who you could only listen to if you got accepted to special schools for the brilliant.

A lot of it the reputation still remains.

Picture a red state factory worker. He knows Harvard grads are super brilliant. DC is full of them. Yet he sees them making obviously stupid decisions.

Some grand 10D chess move is an obvious answer.

People who have more contact with Harvard grads, even just reading their writing regularly, are much more aware of their human limits.

Watching the academic elite discuss politics on Twitter has also opened a lot of eyes.

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I think that’s a bit uncharitable. I’ve always seen “it’s a show” statements as more of a mythical statement than any attempt at literal truth. What’s being gotten here is true — the elites are using other news as a “show” to distract from real, but embarrassing issues. A lot of conspiracy theories tend to work that way — they’re myths, but myths used to teach true things. They’re turning the frogs gay is kinda true. Pollution can change the sex of frogs. They’re shorthand narratives.

I have nothing to add on the object level, but I have to say I think it's pretty cowardly to directly quote another motter's post from earlier in this week's thread without tagging them or even naming them. It would be fine if you did it in the same chain, but when you made a new thread you abstracted it away from the op, and it can't have been mere laziness - you quoted them and it would have been trivial to copy their name too, so the only justification for not tagging them I can see is cowardice.

Although to be honest I would still have had a problem with this post if you had tagged them, because you made a top level comment to air your grievances with another user and I think that is petty attention seeking behaviour. But I wouldn't have thought you were being a coward.

Unfortunately, yes, some of the right-wingers have the right instincts but are profoundly ignorant about the actual facts and events, especially about places like Russian and Ukraine. So they choose on the basis of "if Biden says Putin is bad, then Putin must be awesome based dude, let's worship him". And "if Biden says there's war in Ukraine, it's all fake and there's no war at all". It is a very sad reality. I hope these stupid guys are a minority, because otherwise the US politics would be completely depressing sight for a foreseeable future.

i have noticed this a lot during Covid. "schools are indoctrination factories" "school closures due to Covid are bad". I wouldn't really call it stupidity. It's more like people seek heuristics to have both popular opinions and to be informed without having to put much work or effort, so following whatever is trendy on twitter accomplishes this even if it's contradictory or incoherent.

"schools are indoctrination factories" "school closures due to Covid are bad"

These aren't necessarily contradictory. The ultimate goal is a good school which teaches useful skills while matching the politics of the surrounding population. For the red tribers, that's obviously not what is happening. Some solve it by homeschooling, some - by private schooling, some can't do it for one reason or another - so they have to use the public school system, while recognizing its faults and the indoctrination going on in there. Closing the schools completely is obviously worse for them - if they could do without the schools, they'd already be doing it. Their problem is that they can't, and they can't also neither control how the schools are managed (despite paying for them) nor choose a school which matches their politics (mostly because there wouldn't be any).

It's oppositional defiant disorder spreading to older whites. While ODD is something that is, from time to time, provided as a cause for black youth underperformance in schools, it's not something you've seen attributed to older whites. The perception of mistreatment by authority creates a permanent attitude of anger and defiance.

This can sometimes feel like just part and parcel of the way modern society seems to outright encourage mental illness in the general population. Attitudes and outlooks that, given time to fester, can develop into something almost clinical are celebrated and spread far and wide, coping mechanisms and other attempts to deal with mental health issues like this are denigrated and people are exhorted to reject them.

I don't really know what should be done about it. It has kind of metastasized into a pan-social malady that can't be addressed entirely because it's distributed and deeply entrenched.

This can sometimes feel like just part and parcel of the way modern society seems to outright encourage mental illness in the general population

Well, let me count the options. 24/7 "sky is falling" doom cycle on the news. Constant gaslighting about almost every significant topic, where you are supposed to "trust the experts" and abandon your own judgement. Massive propaganda effort to paint groups of people - especially older white males - as toxic irredeemable bearers of evil, and responsible for all evils starting with Hammurabi times. Obvious contradiction between assumed social contract and the actual reality on the ground. Demonstrative distain by the kakistocracy to every law and moral foundation. Growing atomization of the society. Almost complete destruction of the culture of public debate and civil disagreement. Stigmatization and largely unavailability of low-level low cost mental healthcare (beyond "take this pill and stop wasting my time"). And probably a dozen or so other factors. It's no wonder some people spring a leak upstairs.

Interesting. Oppositional defiant disorder sounds like the opposite of "mass formation psychosis." Pathological consensus versus pathological anti-consensus.

An adult who switches from ambivalence to extreme hostility to authority as a result of an external event doesn't have a mental illness. That's the normal affect for perceived wrongs from authority.

I guess the problem with this is that it treats "authority" as a singular entity, and not as a blob with a million arms that don't talk to each other.

For example, let's say I am the victim of "authority" when a university racially discriminates against me in admissions. A common story. But that doesn't mean my boss, landlord, or local hospital are also out to get me. They are different forms of authority, not closely related to the other.

I don't think it's a mental illness necessarily. It's just that people who are low IQ or agency might have trouble with these distinctions and adopt a suboptimal "everyone's out to get me" mentality that doesn't square with reality.

But that doesn't mean my boss, landlord, or local hospital are also out to get me. They are different forms of authority, not closely related to the other.

Then why do they all start repeating the same mantras at the same time?

If everything is a mental health disorder; then, nothing is. I find these claims absurd; but, I wouldn't call these people mentally ill. The very idea that personality disorders are real mental illnesses is nonsense to me.

Someone being a dick or a bitch doesn't make them mentally ill. They are just a dick or a bitch. Don't medicalise ordinary human personality variation. If you hate them so much just argue against them and their positions without weaponizing the bureaucracy.

this gets into the scott vs caplan debate about what is a mental illness versus a personality trait.

No, because, I readily agree that schizophrenia or bipolar disorder are clearly mental illnesses. Caplan doesn't. It's just personality disorders that I have an issue with. Especially, because, there are no drugs that treat them and therapy is iffy at best. Depression and Anxiety disorders are a middle ground I have no comment on.

Oppositional defiant disorder is a completely BS disorder that is just medicalizing opposition to authority. It's "sluggish schizophrenia" for the modern West

Mental health in general is almost entirely about whether something substantially prevents someone from functioning normally.

So you agree that opposing the Soviet state was ipso facto insane?

Yes, it's how psychiatry works.

And Soviet state was dismantled from inside by CPSU members not activists spreading leaflets.

Amusing aside but I remember reading about pre-revolution Russia and the anti-Czar fever pitch leading up to his deposing.

At one point it was so extreme that during a medical conference, the presiding doctors came to the conclusion that the Czar was directly responsible for the outbreak of syphillis and that the panel’s primary recommendation for responding to the public health crisis is getting rid of the Czar.

Look how well that turned out for them.

Kind of reminds me of BLM in 2020. Rly makes u think.

You might say: "Well, I don't care about anti-Putin Russians, unfortunate pro-Putin Russians who became victims of the regime, neutral Russians, Ukrainians, Uighurs, Tibetans, Taiwanese, ... all I care is that my children don't get castrated and turned into trannies". Fair enough. But then please don't take a high moral ground. You are just as evil as "elites".

I’d say letting your children get castrated so that someone somewhere might be saved from some kind of oppression (real or perceived), is a pretty cucked choice.

How are these the only two choices?

They're not, I'm merely questioning the implied correct choice in the dilemma suggested by the OP.

I was paraphrasing a poster from several weeks back, when they defended British pilots defecting to Chinese. They essentially said that they would rather defect to China than be a subject of trans-friendly anti-white policies of the West. Though they dismissed human rights violations by Chinese as propaganda, and also claimed that the situation with human rights is better in China than in UK. Another example of solipsism.

Though they dismissed human rights violations by Chinese as propaganda, and also claimed that the situation with human rights is better in China than in UK.

Who the hell knows. Have you ever been to China?

Defecting to China is not a good idea for them anyway, though.

Have you ever been to China?

Would having been to China change anything? You don't expect a short visit would instantly expose to you all the complications and intricacies of politics in the billion-sized country, do you? If they have concentration camps, do you expect them to give you a tour on demand? If they torture and murder people for political reasons, do you expect them to show it to you, because they do it for every foreigner who comes in and asks? If they suppress dissent, do you expect them to just admit it to you, once you land in Beijing airport? If you don't see any of that in a 14-day guided tour, would you be ready to say all the people who lived there their whole lives and complain about such things are dirty liars, because you've been there and haven't seen any of that?

You don't expect a short visit would instantly expose to you all the complications and intricacies of politics in the billion-sized country, do you?

That's right. Now, would you expect to gain insights on the complications and intricacies of their politics by reading western media?

would you be ready to say all the people who lived there their whole lives and complain about such things are dirty liars

Well would you be ready to say that all the Chinese people who deny these things or find them implausible are dirty liars?

Thinking one can answer these questions without any sort of reliable insider information source is delusional. I don't have them; do you?

Now, would you expect to gain insights on the complications and intricacies of their politics by reading western media?

By reading only Western media, you can't. By reading all kinds of media - including, but not only, Western - you can make some progress towards it.

Well would you be ready to say that all the Chinese people who deny these things or find them implausible are dirty liars?

If they are in China at the moment, or their relatives or family are - no, they are probably just afraid. Justifiably, I may notice, as we have examples of people persecuted for saying things the regime does not like. I wouldn't call a dirty liar a person that says something he knows to be not true, but also knows if he says the truth he'd risk his life and maybe the lives of others. I'll rather call him a victim. If they are outside China's control - I'd have to look into them further to determine whether or not they are liars, so it'd go on case by case basis. If they say there are no human rights violations in China - they are liars for sure, as there are documented examples of them. If they say the specific violation did not happen - it may be true, or they may be mistaken, or they may be lying, again - case by case.

Thinking one can answer these questions without any sort of reliable insider information source is delusional

Answer definitely? No. Get to a high degree of certainty? Yes. Just as it is done with all other things we can not observe or perceive directly - by carefully collecting, evaluating and filtering available pieces of circumstantial evidence, until a general picture starts to become clear. And then updating this picture once new pieces of evidence come in. Current picture suggests China is under a totalitarian fascist regime which has a complete disdain for anything called "human rights" in the West (I'm not sure there's such concept in China at all?), routinely prosecutes dissidents and anybody who dares to contradict the party line, operates concentration camps and performs multiple atrocities.

Yep. Solipsism. "Do I even know whether anything aside from me exist? Planets? Viruses? Tiananmen Square protests? The Great Firewall of China? Forcible sterilizations under One Child Policy? Probably all lies of MSM, we will never know"

Forcible sterilizations under One Child Policy?

We probably supported that (not literally AFAIK, but I doubt that we were opposed) given that our NGOs were prodding India to do the same.

Anti-natalist policies were all the rage at the time, with South Korea's arguably looking like the biggest retrospective "whoops". Amusingly, even an Islamic theocracy couldn't stop their bureaucrats from being influenced by Ehrlich.

In case of India there is a share of direct responsibility — but the West couldn't significantly influence China's policies, not during Mao's rule, not after that. Aside from infecting Chinese leadership with harmful memes, of course, which then were turned to 11 due to totalitarian nature of China. But we don't blame Germany for being a place of origin of Marx, whose ideas caused death of millions.

Due to me largely being a single-issue anti-lockdown guy at this point, I guess in the US I'd fall in with the "dissident right" even if I disagree with them on the majority of social issues. To give an example, I back LGBT rights in about the way you'd expect from a progressive but I can't back progressives in their current form because the end result of lockdownism is everyone, including LGBT people, equally having no rights. You can't claim to support LGBT rights and simultaneously criminalize sex).

So Russia... Fuck Russia. They too are a lockdownist regime, and I equally want Putin's head displayed on the end of a pike as I do the average prog. The place I differ is that I also want most western leaders heads lined up alongside his. Hence my stance on the war is that I hope both sides lose. Both sides losing probably requires that Russia lose first, because I don't see a route where a Russian victory leads to uprisings against Putin but a Ukrainian victory probably has Zelensky get turfed out in a few years if recent Ukrainian history is anything to go by.

There is a hypothetical world in which Russia are indeed liberating Ukraine from it's vile regime. The problem, of course, is that this isn't the actual circumstance. Belarus would have a slightly better case to make, as one of the few countries that avoided lockdowns, I'd at least give Lukashenko the time of day if he invaded Ukraine in 2020 to liberate Ukrainians from their regime - it would at least be a coherent cause. Even if Russia invaded the UK, I might defect to them just for the opportunity to get justice for the crimes that the British regime has committed against me, but it would be no more than pure opportunism on my part. But what exactly can Putin claim to liberate Ukraine from? From one corrupt lockdownist oligarchy to another? How utterly pointless.

Of course they'll have prepared a long list of grievances with "elites" that are intended to persuade you that whatever happens in the US is much worse than repressions in Russia or China.

The most notable form of repressions over the last few years were lockdowns, affecting billions. When it comes to how brutal these are, there isn't some vast difference between Russia and the West. Even China has typically behaved more courteously towards those protesting lockdowns than Western regimes have done. And if democracy is meant to be the difference, I wonder what exactly is supposed to be the difference between Putin's machinations and media control to win his elections, and western "mainstream" parties winning via similar censorship and violent attacks on dissidents? We no longer need to speculate. The paper trail of censorship of opponents of lockdowns has been traced back to governments.

But why do some on the dissident right actively support Putin rather than take my burn it all down including Russia approach? I don't think it's quite enemy of my enemy is my friend. It's more appeal to an outside power. Like cosmic intervention. Desperately hoping they'd swoop in to save the day. Just like far-left dissidents wanted the USSR to do during the cold war, or e.g. anti-Putin protesters in Russia sometimes want NATO to do. It's a cry for help because they do not see any way to depose their regime without external assistance. Which I reject, because I don't think Putin would replace their regime with what they want. Sweden, though? They can nuke me whenever they feel like it. Drone me harder Tegnell.

Fair enough. But then please don't take a high moral ground. You are just as evil as "elites".

The social contract to not act in maximally selfish ways is broken, and the dissident right have a good claim that they aren't responsible for breaking it.

One thing I will say is how disappointing the lack of accountability there seems to be for the lockdown group. They created massive damage and it seems like everyone’s response is “who could’ve known”

Is it right to be this level of angry over lockdowns? At least at the beginning, it wasn't obviously wrong. At some level of lethality of the virus, it would be the best thing to do, I think, since the hit to the economy and everyone else is worth keeping large swathes of the populace alive—just COVID was well below that, and hence the lockdowns were pretty harmful, especially in the places that they were more intense, and way too long lasting after it became apparent it was not going to accomplish its aims, and was a cure far worse than the (literal) disease.

The thing about lockdowns, at least in the U.S., is that their continued existence after COVID was found to be non-lethal wasn’t merely a costly mistake, but a form of political imprisonment. This may sound dramatic; let me explain.

In May 2020, police were kicking kids out of playgrounds in my blue town while marches and protests in memory of George Floyd were not only allowed, but encouraged. Remember, The Science declared that “racism is a bigger public health issue than COVID”. This unmasked (heh) the true nature of the lockdowns: citizens were imprisoned unless they were to participate in Party-approved political functions. Note that I do not suggest that the lockdowns were concocted from the beginning in order to achieve this aim; no cabal of doctors got together and crafted this plan back in March. But the effect of the lockdowns was equivalent to political imprisonment.

That’s why I have more anger towards the lockdown and its proponents than I would harbor if they were merely another entry in the list of costly mistakes committed by our technocrat rulers. It is precisely because they were wielded as a political weapon that they ought be scorned as one.

It's use as a political weapon became even more overt with vaccine mandates, which were used to punish if not outright purge political dissidents.

The lockdowns and other measures - American and Euro alike - were unjustified by the threat, were ineffective, and violated various principles that should have been considered too important to throw overboard in a panic. They were obviously wrong in multiple ways, many of which were indeed obvious as soon as the lockdowns began, and some of which were obvious even beforehand.

Not obvious: Covid was largely harmless.

Obvious as soon as the measures started: Their implementation has more holes than substance and you may as well not bother.

Obvious from the get-go: Liberal societies shouldn't suspend civil liberties based on nebulous suspicions.

That these measures were kept up for years, kept coming back even when it was evident they weren't accomplishing anything other than damage, and that people were vilified for not going along is more than enough food for a very high level of anger.

At some level of lethality, explicit lockdowns won't be necessary because everyone will be voluntarily staying home for fear of infection. At levels below that, lockdowns won't work because people won't follow them due to the risk of death being low. It's only when the lethality is unknown but plausibly high that lockdowns can be justified, but once the lethality is known you'll end up in one of the first two situations.

And even then, lockdowns would not be justified unless quarantining was impossible.

Putting Belarus above Ukraine in 2020 in terms of human rights just due to Ukraine being influenced by Western COVID-policies, and implementing lockdowns, while Belarus' leader doing absolutely nothing and advising his people to drink vodka in order to protect themselves from COVID leads to some interesting paradoxes. You'll get African dictatorships above Denmark.

The social contract to not act in maximally selfish ways is broken, and the dissident right have a good claim that they aren't responsible for breaking it.

God created all people in his image, and your belief in God and your obligation before other human beings is not dependent on whatever left-wingers or establishment in your country do or say. I'm not religious, but I'm a moral universalist, and death of Russians, Ukrainians, and Americans is equally tragic. American right-wingers, who often emphasize their religiosity, do not consider suffering of people in Haiti, Russia, Ukraine, China, or wherever — explicitly. While I can understand the ignorance (often willful) of human suffering across the world, or in-group preference (after all, even the most altruistic people don't give their homes to refuges and homeless), or healthy egoism, that's different from saying "NOT. OUR. PROBLEM". Catturd2 is a piece of shit, but I still will have moral obligation to save him if I'll see him drowning. Radical in-group ethics is evil, but I understand that some people might disagree.

And yes, I donate much of my salary to charity, so I put my money where my mouth is.

It was noted by someone else downthread that the American right is not a monolith — and indeed, you have a lot of right-wing charities supporting people around the world. Even proselytizing in third-world countries, like Mormons do, is pro-social and universalist. I am speaking specifically about dissident-right America-first chronically online twitterati (some of them even recognize that. I remember how in early reporting on the Ukraine War Tucker, when he was still on Fox News, constantly said at the end of his segments about Ukraine something like: "Poor, poor Ukrainians! Those poor people!". Saying "Fuck Ukraine" can fly on Twitter, but not on television, I guess)

Putting Belarus above Ukraine in 2020 in terms of human rights just due to Ukraine being influenced by Western COVID-policies, and implementing lockdowns, while Belarus' leader doing absolutely nothing and advising his people to drink vodka in order to protect themselves from COVID leads to some interesting paradoxes. You'll get African dictatorships above Denmark.

Interesting? Yes. Paradox? No. Tanzania did rank above Denmark for human rights in 2020. It's pretty hard to be worse for human rights than imprisoning everyone. I guess Pol Pot's omnicide attempts are clearly worse, to give at least one example?

God created all people in his image, and your belief in God and your obligation before other human beings is not dependent on whatever left-wingers or establishment in your country do or say. I'm not religious, but I'm a moral universalist, and death of Russians, Ukrainians, and Americans is equally tragic. American right-wingers, who often emphasize their religiosity, do not consider suffering of people in Haiti, Russia, Ukraine, China, or wherever — explicitly.

I think my comments preferring places as far-flung as Sweden and Tanzania to my own country (and countrymen) should make it clear that I do take a universal approach.

Catturd2 is a piece of shit, but I still will have moral obligation to save him if I'll see him drowning. Radical in-group ethics is evil, but I understand that some people might disagree.

The difference here is that I was metaphorically drowning and, worse than merely not being helped, the majority of people around me hoped I'd drown harder. There is a point at which charity becomes doormattery, and caring for people who overwhelmingly wanted to harm me is the latter.

And yes, I donate much of my salary to charity, so I put my money where my mouth is.

I would donate more to charity if I felt there were charities that were reasonably working towards their goals. I was much more likely to donate to charities pre-2020, before most of them revealed themselves to be nigh-fraudulent by refusing to challe nge lockdowns. To provide an anecdote from when this place (or was it /r/slatestarcodex, don't quite remember) was back on reddit, we once had someone approach the subreddit soliciting donations for a charity that operates on a native american reservation to help with malnutrition. We quickly found out, after some questioning, that the cause of their economic plight was not just generic poverty, but that the government of the reservation had imposed lockdowns on it. The charity refused to challenge the actual cause of the malnutrition. Me and some other people basically said we'd donate to an org willing to help with the actual problem if such an org exists but the proposed charity ain't it.

Uh... Why are you a single issue anti lockdown person? Was it really so horrible to be forced to be told what to do and stay at home more than usual?

The lockdowns were actually pretty great for me, personally - I could relocate to a much cheaper place while getting paid the same, without any pushback from the corporate overlords, because WFH became the norm. But I think the fact that this thing happened in America without any serious pushback is a horrible thing, and everybody complicit in it has my full personal disgust and hate.

Most of the hate for lockdowns just smacks of "I don't care if additional millions of old and vulnerable people had died, the virus wasn't dangerous to me personally and forcing me to conform and sacrifice is a great crime". There was reason for lockdowns and they saved lives, yet people on this site tend to deny that. Although, yes, the details of their implementations were often idiotic.

That's some vile bullshit. NY governor - and others - directly caused deaths of thousands by their policies of forced admittance of sick individuals in the nursing homes with healthy ones. But if I want to go to a beach - alone - and swim in the sea, I am killing the elderly. Elites dined in large luxurious companies, maskless - but if I go to a store, I can not buy anything beyond pre-approved list, because I am killing the elderly. Politicians called to go to the Chinatown and hug random people there because this would show I'm not racist, politicians condone mass riots smack in the middle of pandemic because "fighting racism is more important for public health" - but if I meet two friends for a glass of beer, I am killing the elderly. Screw that. I would consider accepting the baloney about "sacrifice" if the people who demand sacrifices from me behaved like they think it is serious. When they proudly stood maskless in front on masked servants, this is not "sacrifice" - this is showing that they are the patricians and we are the plebeians. When they closed down businesses, but had them private open for them on the down low - this is not "sacrifice", this is oppression. When they destroyed thousands of small businesses while "disappearing" tens of billions of dollars of "covid fund" - this is not "sacrifice", this is fraud.

There was reason for lockdowns and they saved lives

No they did not. You can worship this idol however you want, you can believe that dances with tambоurinеs, sacrifice of chickens and wearing special religious garments and performing elaborate rituals is the only thing that keeps the world from collapse. That's you religion, and I won't say anything about it, it's between you and whatever gods or other entities you worship. But when you try to force me into your religion, when you deny all empiric evidence and logic in service of your religious dogma, and when you lay all the atrocities that fellows of your religion committed - at my feet, I have nothing to say but "screw that". Your attempt at emotional blackmail failed.

people on this site tend to deny that

People on this site deny that too: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(23)00461-0/fulltext

Mandate propensity (a summary measure that captures a state's use of physical distancing and mask mandates) was associated with a statistically significant and meaningfully large reduction in the cumulative infection rate (figure 3B), but not the cumulative death rate

In other words, mandates help lowering infection rate among low-risk populations, but did nothing for high risk populations. In more mundane words, all this destruction and fascism was so we could have the cough a couple of months later than otherwise, with no change in outcome.

Although, yes, the details of their implementations were often idiotic.

Oh, sorry, I forgot - true socialism has been never tried. Maybe next time.

millions of old and vulnerable people did die and comparisons between places with lockdowns and not lockdowns (and varying levels of lockdowns) do not buttress the claim they reduced mortality even in that target group

someone sure is in denial of something, and it's the person who has to rely on an unsupported counterfactual of "sure millions of old and vulnerable people did die anyway, alone, cloistered off from their family, and not being taken care of by terrified medical staff as they drowned in their own fluid, and at an absurd cost in wealth and human rights violations, but more totally would have died without it"

once you account for those who died anyway and the enormous cost in wealth, lives, and rights violations, the lockdowns comes into focus as the stupidest public policy decision of the last 100 years and I hope each of you who supported such lunacy is constantly reminded of it like an albatross around their neck

and it wasn't only stupid in hindsight (it's preposterously stupid in hindsight), it was stupid at the time with relevant data and evidence at the time which was entirely ignored for reasons we're all left to speculate; Should we 1) use flu pandemic guidelines carefully crafted over 100 years in response to real world diseases or 2) throw those away and launch into a vastly costly global experiment with next to zero scientific support while refusing to engage in any sort of cost-benefit analysis whatsoever?

characterizing lockdowns as mere "conforming" and "forced to stay at home more than usual" is asininely dishonest

and stinks of someone whose cost for lockdowns was either near zero or positive

That's the one great legacy of covid. It took that big exogenous shock to move the needle toward remote work. The viability of such work was mostly speculative before then.

A giant blow against an Office Space-style quality of life pain point.

Yes. I am seeing companies who didn't touch WFH with a ten-foot pole now opening remote positions. Once this happens, there's no stopping it - even if you ban WFH, people would just leave for a company that doesn't. Unless you pay fabulously well - which only a small percentage of companies does, and even for them it may be not fabulous enough to justify living in a place like San Francisco - you'd just get your market reduced, that's all. Only a total memetic blockade of WFH on the management level has been sustaining the "local only" model, but this has been broken and I don't think it's coming back. It can come back in certain companies, but not industry-wide.

I had two small children with special education needs entering the education system right as the lockdowns started, and I’m more or less working class without the resources for private education and therapy, so naturally as the lockdowns went on I was filled with white hot nuclear rage at those responsible for them.

You ever seen a toddler do speech therapy with a mask on with masked adults?

Trust me when I say it’s one of the most frustrating, pointless exercises you could witness. Especially when it’s your kid.

That and the fact that my industry was completely devastated by the lockdowns as it was all in person work.

And I live in a heavily blue state.

So me and mine were absolutely the type of people sacrificed at the altar so that overweight, CNN addicted middle age office workers could have the perception of safety.

I can't believe how many lockdown supporters are still around.

The lockdowns...

  1. Didn't work.

  2. Had massive negative side effects.

  3. Were an illegal imposition against personal rights.

This leaves just one weak pillar of support: "I personally benefited".

We recognize it's evil when a Halliburton exec benefits from a cruel and unnecessary war. It's also evil for people to support lockdowns because they personally came out ahead.

The "pandemic" was a period in which many societies and governments dropped the mask on pluralism, burned the hitherto observed social contract, and stopped just short of putting guns to people's heads to tell them "do as we say or else", purely to force people into obedience for no good reason and many bad ones. And they stopped not because they came to their senses, but because the war in the Ukraine distracted them.

Seeing what petty tyranny lurks behind the thinning facade of supposedly liberal society can have a sobering effect.

It really was a mask off moment. We could see which people in power had principles (very few) vs. who was just playing team baseball (almost everyone).

Even the author of fucking "Manufacturing Consent" revealed himself to be more than willing to be a fascist if it was for the right team.

In my own personal life, I've learned to give people more charity and grace for having the wrong opinions. How could I do otherwise, when almost everyone fell under the spell? As for my friends who held firm against the tidal wave of bullshit I now have a much stronger connection and respect. It's like a secret club of people who you can really trust.

I object to being falsely imprisoned.

Do you really even have to ask? Seriously, I don't understand how this can be so mysterious? What next, will you ask why Uyghurs don't like reeducation camps?

You were not imprisoned.

So there was no criminal penalties being threatened for me leaving a location? Strange. I seem to quite clearly remember the law saying exactly that.

It is mysterious becuase it looks like you're grouping "reeducation camps" and "lockdowns" together on the basis on how legally similar they are - not on how horrible the experience is.

Lockdowns are not as bad as being on the business end of a genocide.

That being said, they were really, really bad. I would be prepared to forgive and forget if they were taught as a ‘never again’ moment and written into history books as the worst human rights violations in the modern west, Fauci and whitmer as unambiguous villains, and anti-lockdown activists as brave freedom fighters who admittedly believed some crazy things, but let’s not focus on that.

This is not how the establishments in western countries want to record things- lockdowns were some combination of a false memory, tragically necessary, and a mistake but not that bad. So yes, I’m still very angry about them, and it’s a perfectly justifiable degree of hyperbole above.

It makes sense to speak against lockdowns because they were actually harmful in ways you can describe, like the guy above with his children who couldn't do speech therapy with masks on, or because they were dumb and unproductive/counterproductive towards their stated goal. Or it makes sense to speak against the government for moving the goalposts and Fauci-ing it up.

Tophattingson on the other hand, the whole idea I get from his posts, is all about how they're bad because they're somewhat like imprisonment according to its dictionary definition, and imprisonment is against human rights as written by libertarians, and therefore they must be the Worst Evil Ever. I cannot help but associate this kind of legalesthetic thinking and tunnel vision with sovereign citizens.

I would be prepared to forgive and forget if they were taught as a ‘never again’ moment and written into history books as the worst human rights violations in the modern west

Do you honestly believe they were the worst human rights violation, or is it just a condition for forgiving and forgetting?

I hate them for all the other reasons too. I simply add one more reason. I do not think it would be productive for me to drop hundreds of examples of specific lockdown harms though if you do want specific examples I can provide them.

We had norms against what happened in 2020 for a reason (if you think they were not norms, find me pre-2020 lockdown advocates). Arbitrary home imprisonment of the entire population is not a power that the public typically granted the state. It is not a power that a state can safely have access to. Even if they used it correctly in 2020 it would be dangerous, but the actual course of events demonstrates it's danger: A state powerful enough to imprison everyone is powerful enough to fabricate the reason why it's doing so. Evidence: They did it for covid. Because of this, there is no safe way to grant a state this power even if there's a hypothetical virus/pandemic/whatever that would warrant doing so.

That's the additional argument I present. Simply tallying up the costs of lockdowns vs the costs of covid creates the impression that there could be a good lockdown in the right circumstance. I disagree because I think the risks of a state that can do a lockdown are far greater than any benefit they could create, as demonstrated by what happened in 2020. The best schelling point to protect against this, and the one we used pre-2020, is to prohibit arbitrary imprisonment. I am distraught that we have since abandoned this protection.

sovereign citizens

Sovereign citizens believe they are following the law albeit it's a law that does not actually exist. They think there's magic legal cheat codes that let them ignore certain laws. I'm saying fuck the law if it's like this. Those are very different positions.

Do you honestly believe they were the worst human rights violation, or is it just a condition for forgiving and forgetting?

Individually, no. Socially, hell yes, they were violation on a hitherto unprecedented scale. Not sure about human rights, but something was violated there.

how they're bad because they're somewhat like imprisonment according to its dictionary definition, and imprisonment is against human rights as written by libertarians

I mean they are exactly like imprisonment as currently practiced for minor-ish criminals -- enforced house arrest with allowances to leave under limited circumstances. If you think that being against arbitrary imprisonment is on the libertarian end of the spectrum that's fine I guess -- but I wonder where it puts you on the political compass?

I am against arbitrary imprisonment, it's just that we're using different definitions of "arbitrary". The word invokes "literally no correlation with any external reasons other than 'we said so'" to me, and to anti-lockdowners, I guess, "when they didn't ask our opinion"? "When it wasn't in response to anything I personally did"? Maybe you can clarify.

I find this whole rhetoric around it reminiscent of "taxation is theft", to which I respond "well then, I support organized theft that doesn't ruin the targets with redistribution towards societal needs and don't support targeted theft that sometimes ruins targets and only enriches the thief".

More comments

Lockdowns were like imprisonment for me. Like a prolonged home arrest for no reason. Somehow it was very clear that they will be useless and the policies didn't even make sense.

Yes, they were the worst human rights violations in the western world since the war ended or something like that.

Only when you widen your comparison to places where wars and genocide still happens (Ukraine, other wars, Uigurs etc.), we can find examples with even worse violations.

Do you honestly believe they were the worst human rights violation, or is it just a condition for forgiving and forgetting?

For a given definition of ‘modern’ and ‘west’, yes.

I don’t consider Serbia in the 90s western and don’t call the Holocaust modern in the sense I’m talking about.

If you are smarter, you align yourself with perceived enemies of the elites: Putin, Xi, Orban, .... You say things like:

«What does this have to do with Lenin?»

Nowadays, John Locke is considered to be the founder of English liberalism. But Locke became widely popular only in the 19th century; in the 17th-18th he was scarcely read or quoted. Algernon Sidney was the ruler of minds at that time – it was his ideas, for example, from which the founding fathers of the United States drew. Sidney was an active participant in the English Revolution and a staunch Republican, so after the establishment of Cromwell's dictatorship he resigned from all posts. After the Stuart restoration he went to the continent, first to the Netherlands, then to France, unsuccessfully trying to organize a mutiny against the king. After an amnesty he returned to England, where he was arrested for treason. Two witnesses were required for a conviction for treason, but the authorities found only one. Then Lord Jeffreys did a feint and brought in Sidney's own book, Discourses on the government, as a second witness. The fact that the book had not even been printed and was kept in Sidney's desk failed to deter the judges and they sentenced him to execution. So Sidney became the chief martyr of the Whig movement and an icon of English liberalism and republicanism.

Much later, documents were published proving that the tyrannicidal Sidney lived on the money of the main tyrant of Europe and the enemy of England, Louis XIV, and sought money from him to organize a rebellion. The only thing they did not agree on was the price – Sidney wanted one hundred thousand ecus, but the king agreed to give only five times less.

This publication caused a furor. One of Sidney's friends said he could not have been more ashamed if he had seen his son fleeing the battlefield with his own eyes. The liberal historian Macaulay wrote that few things hurt him as much as seeing Sidney's name on Louis XIV's list of pensioners.

However, let's look at the situation from the other side. Suppose you are a revolutionary and want to overthrow the regime. How exactly are you going to do it? By crushing it with authority? You basically have no choice but to turn to other regimes that are enemies of yours. Simply because loners don't solve anything in this world, only corporations do. Meanwhile, in the second half of the 17th century it was the states that became the strongest corporations on Earth, and in the second half of the 18th century they subjugated or destroyed all their rivals. So it turns out that opposing one state you are forced to turn to others for support, with no options.

So the moronic lamentations about Lenin and the money of the German General Staff just don't make any sense. Of course Lenin would have taken money from the devil, the alternative would have been to sit in Switzerland and smear snot on his face for the rest of his life.

Kamil Galeev, May 18, 2018

This, like a great deal of Galeev's old writing, says more about his own life strategy than about history. Nevertheless, his facts seem correct. And Lenin, after all, succeeded.

Fair enough. But then please don't take a high moral ground. You are just as evil as "elites".

You appeal to principle, but that's a principle of peacetime, not of genocide time. Would you have given the same counsel to, ah, Ukrainian soldiers siding with unironic Nazis? Or anti-Chinese Uighurs receiving support from hardcore Muslim movements? No, «the arrow doesn't turn», «this is different»? (Of course I won't say «siding with the US» because that's axiomatically righteous).

Let's not pretend that this is about anything other than objective incompetence and subjective lack of merit of the ideology. Right-wingers (more to the point, nationalists of any stripe sans the most shallowly «civic») are thoroughly routed in the West, same as in Russia incidentally. Russian rump looks to Ukrainian Nazis for guidance, Western one seeks salvation in Baste Putin. It's desperation tactics. Both right-wing camps understand their situation as genocide, slow or rapid, open or concealed. The same way Galeev understood the condition of Tatars before going to Washington DC.

Many camps assert to be driven by fear of genocide. It's the absence of attempts to unscrupulously find external sponsors that gives the lie to all the hand-wringing.

Jefferson, at least, read Locke.

Soliciting external sponsors with domestic elite support is revolutionary, but attempting to find external sponsors with no elite support is being a traitor. It's concern-trolling to say that if right-wingers actually believed in the gravity of demographic change then they would become traitors for no strategically beneficial reason, and that nonsense should be denounced as it is among many in the DR.

Fostering radical politics within the inertia of European political and cultural integration is the right course of action for Right-wingers. You aren't a traitor if you work to foster pan-European ethnic consciousness because it aligns with the basic nature of the EU and NATO. Does petty nationalism and local populism, much less civic nationalism, have any credibility at this point? 2016 and the failure of Trump and Brexit show that's a dead end.

The liberals are taking on the headwinds of political and financial integration of Europe, the institutions capable for the task are being built for us. The Right wing should not turn traitor for no reason, they should say "Evropa!"

It's concern-trolling to say that if right-wingers actually believed in the gravity of demographic change then they would become traitors for no strategically beneficial reason

Well that depends on the object level. For the longest time, Putin's structures actually provided some morsels of support to the European far right. So I'd say it did seem like they had a strategic reason to stan him.

The Right wing should not turn traitor for no reason, they should say "Evropa!"

They sure can try to own this trend.

Just like every Greek and Levantine state had reason to support the Roman Republic, before they all came under the rule of the Roman Empire.

You are missing the point of Galeev's parable, I'm afraid. Far right dissidents are not representatives of their states, nor do they recognize the legitimacy of incumbent representatives. Of course the specific project of European identitarianism (or local populism) was still doomed, but the idea of shaping conditions for sovereignty via alliances of convenience with repulsive outsiders is well-supported by historical track record in the Old World. Indeed it's not even reputationally costly – you can fight for communist tyranny and then become heroes to some of the most anti-communist people on the continent, to have wistful songs composed in your honor. (Or you could fight for Nazis, so long as you have some cute songs to the effect that Fuhrer sucks). How does that work? A Russian pig dog slave won't understand, this is very subtle stuff. Freedom is best, and hard choices, after all. Unironically.

If anything, DRs are unusual in their tendency to justify their allies and sponsors ideologically as well, and to sincerely buy and propagate those excuses; it took the war to snap them out of it – incompletely, at that.

It’s because DR vision isn’t just about mercenary funding; if it was that then they might as well seek it from China and yet, with the occasional Spandrell exception, they hate China. The vision is that they are obsessed by the insecurity that there is not one huwhite country in the world that is led according to their general ideological impulse. This is not in itself an insurmountable problem, in 1917 communism had existed for 70 years but had only ever been tested for a very short period in the Paris commune (and then only partially). But it is irksome. Orban is about as conservative as someone on the right wing of the British Conservative Party, much as Dreher wants to pretend otherwise, and is in general primarily devoted to enriching his friends from his home village. And Hungary is also very small, it’s like progressives pointing to Luxembourg or libertarians to Monaco or something.

The Russia obsession was more about trying to imagine baste Putinist Russia as white rightist country (even though, as you made clear, it never was) to prove ‘it’s possible’. Any material support was secondary to the psychological support.

Ah, yes, I missed that.

It's more than irksome. Communism inherently sells itself as the vision of the future, only ever an experiment at attaining perfection (even though I agree with Shafarevich that it's a millenia-old failure mode, a sort of naturally occurring cancer, equipped with the evergreen pretense at having noticed the skulls); reactionaries are, well, drawn to tradition. Russia the third Rome, Russia the eternal based no-nonsense Czardom, Russia the bulwark against degeneracy, the shard of the right-thinking world that had been, a living link. Was silly in Nietzsche's time, vastly sillier now.

for readers not familiar with Russian memes: «the arrow [of the oppression] doesn't turn» is about who oppressing whom, and once it was established, the oppressed cannot become the oppressor no matter what.

Russia (like the rest of Europe) is slowly dying. That's fine, everything eventually comes to an end. However it made an inadvisable move to lash out one last time before the inevitable, one final death throe before the end, but this too has backfired on it and made things even worse for the country as a whole. You can't blame them for trying something, but you can blame them for picking a particularly bad thing to try. In the modern world we have reached an equilibrium where military power means less and less compared to economic and cultural staying power and many of these events are just (painful) lessons to those who weren't able or willing to follow the winds of change. Experience is the best (and most painful) teacher as they say.

Sure, it sucks for current Russians (and Europeans) but this is just the wheel of fortune, nothing more and nothing less. There are times when you're climbing up, and times when you're being kicked down. It's just what it is. Given that it's very hard to compete with the current hegemonic American culture if Russia really wanted to be successful in spreading its ideas in the modern world it would defund its military and spend the money on boosting Russian fertility to create lots of people who believe in Russian ideology instead.

The military will always be relevant. The only reason it’s not at present is that there’s a pretty strong military hegemony in NATO and America. When there’s a military power that can bomb most countries to rubble in a matter of a day or two, the idea that a country can invade another and not be stopped is silly.

Those days are coming to an end. Americans are having fewer kids, and they’re less interested in joining the military. Politically, I think a lot of people are less interested in policing the world as well. If you lose the American military, wars come back and having a strong military becomes important again.

pretty strong military hegemony in NATO and America.

That's a smug illusion, which is being dispelled by the inability of the entirety of NATO to give Ukraine enough weapons to defeat a militarily inept country with the nominal GDP of Italy.

Russians are being barely competent and are not even trying that hard when it comes to war-economy measures.

I see you‘ve now embraced the pro-ukrainian side‘s italian gdp comparison argument your friends so derisively dismissed in the beginning, preferring a more flattering and delusional comparison to the US. I hope you guys adjust your claims regarding russia‘s rightful place in the world accordingly. How much shit are we supposed to take from a poorer italy?

I didn't 'embrace' anything - but even if you do PPP adjustment, Russia just has the GDP of Germany, which means American Empire has .. how much.. 5x more ? 6x more ?

And somehow..

Right, despite possessing 10x (PPP) to 25x(nominal) the economic power of russia, the West (US, EU + UK), have barely given enough aid to equal the russian military budget. If someone's not trying, it's us. Somehow... it was still enough to inflict territorial losses on the russians.

Territorial losses ?

Russia still has Crimea and the separatist republics.

The 'equipment' given so far seems to have been used up assaulting tiny patches of land and has been now sitting out in the open in no man's land for weeks.

This video here probably shows 10% of tanks, IFVs given to Ukraine sitting abandonded in a few square kilometers of fields.

EDIT: added the video link.

This video here probably shows 10% of tanks, IFVs given to Ukraine sitting abandonded in a few square kilometers of fields.

You seem to count some subset of tanks. Poland alone gave Ukraine around 330 tanks and 240 IFV (per https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/08/a-european-powerhouse-polish-military.html ).

This field has far less than 10% of that.

More comments

kherson and kharkov offensives. Obviously I'm not counting the gains russia made while we were still debating amongst ourselves what to do about it (zaporizhia), or even earlier, where we debating if we would do anything at all (crimea and donbas). Even taking your "probably" at face value, 10% of a few dozen tanks is nothing compared to the 2000 tanks and 2500 IFVs documented russian losses(oryx on the conflict. As you know, so far, the vast majority of our aid has not been in tanks, but it was clearly effective nonetheless.

Here we go again. The Russians aren't even trying!

You'd think after more than a year of the world laughing at them, they'd start trying already.

I'm not saying they're not trying.

I'm saying they're so bad at this, they've mobilized so few people, they've messed up with munitions productions - yet they still haven't been beaten.

I see we've come all the way from 'resistance is futile, Russian strength is overwhelming and their victory inevitable' to 'it's abject proof of weakness you haven't defeated the Russians already.'

Biological reproduction rates pale in comparison to memetic ones. Ignoring the unfortunate reality that effectively no one has found a policy capable of flipping fertility declines, what use is a Russia of 400 million if 300 million read the New York Times, or at least watch Marvel movies?

what use is a Russia of 400 million if 300 million read the New York Times, or at least watch Marvel movies?

That's kind of solipsistic as well. Russia doesn't have anything even closely resembling New York Times (I guess, Meduza which is an independent media opposed to the current regime; or Vedomosti, Wall Street Journal-like magazine, whose journalist was arrested, and which was bought by an oligarch close to Putin). The worst American rag is better than whatever Russia has. So why exactly Russian memes should propagate aside from them being anti-American?

But that's exactly my point - they shouldn't and won't. From the perspective of a hypothetical emperor of Russia, if you were to focus on one thing, population numbers are simply not the primary driver of success. You have to convince people that your cause is right. That's not just a post-modern perspective, that's the task of every leader in human history. (In some systems those you have to convince are an aristocracy, in some the wealthy, in others almost everyone, but it always works the same way.)

The Internet and automatic translation simply makes it impossible to be a big fish in a small pond, as your "subjects" will be inculcated in the most effective (read:virulent) ideas that they are exposed to on the web. You either win on that battlefield, or on the physical one. Putin was at least wise enough to recognize that he and his nation weren't up to the memetic battlefield; his mistake was overestimating Russia's ability on the physical plane.

I’m gonna give you a really unpopular take on that, but I think it’s sort of a half truth. Not that the civil war is fake, it seems fairly real as far as I can tell, but that it’s actually quite common for the news media to focus on other stories besides the ones that matter simply because they don’t want to undermine their patrons. Or they might quite often simply ignore part of a story or exaggerate something to make it seem like it’s bigger or smaller.

Furthermore, they aren’t exactly wrong about the elites. They aren’t in the same world as you and I are. They certainly consider themselves Americans in the sense that this is their home, but quite often, because of their donors and the fact that most of them spend large amounts of time overseas, don’t see the fact of them being Americans as a reason to choose to do things to help the average American over other global concerns. They also, just on the values, attitudes, and beliefs don’t hold the same culture that regular Americans do. Traditional American culture is Western European (basically British, Celtic, and German), more religious and very specifically evangelical Christian, strongly believe in the work ethic — and especially practical work (building and inventing useful things, farming and so on), and strongly oriented to their family. The elites would see that culture as backwards, racist, poorly educated and cultured, and in need of enlightenment.

Traditional American culture is Western European (basically British, Celtic, and German),

Funny thing is the "German" part could even get you in jail about 100 years ago or so... You know, given the war with Germany and yelling fire in a crowded theater and all that. As for the Celtic, if we go another 50 years back, "no Irish need apply" would be a familiar phrase. So I wonder, what is that "traditional American culture" we love so much?

I mean yeah, cultures change. That doesn’t mean that there’s no current culture or clash between American folk culture and the type of culture the elites want us to adopt.

Unfortunately the "dissident right" is so broad, it's not accurate to attribute a single position on this issue to that sphere. FWIW none of those screenshots from "prominent" DR figures are accounts I have heard of before. There is a variety of opinion among the DR, ranging from immediately and vocally pro-Ukraine (Richard Spencer comes to mind) to "no more brother wars"/general neutrality, to, yes, support for Russia and Putin on an absurd "enemy of my enemy" angle, with Nick Fuentes as the worst offender on that front. I can't say I've seen the DR at all obsessed with the Hunter Biden stuff as you say, that seems to me Boomercon-coded and outside of 4chan threads nobody in the DR cares or talks about Hunter Biden.

The big rift between the DR is currently between petty-nationalism and pan-Europeanism. The former oppose EU and NATO as institutions of globalization and want those institutions to be undermined by a credible adversary. The latter see globalization and Imperivm as inevitable and desirable and do not oppose EU or NATO even though they obviously seek to realign them with a European race consciousness. The former, in my opinion, are greatly discredited by this affair and the latter, who have supported Ukraine, are vindicated.

I can't say I've seen the DR at all obsessed with the Hunter Biden stuff as you say, that seems to me Boomercon-coded and outside of 4chan threads nobody in the DR cares or talks about Hunter Biden.

Agree. What I see is basically, "no shit, of course he's wildly corrupt and these people are embezzling tons of money while doing nothing useful, that's literally not even news". Dwelling on the matter or expecting that it's going to change something is heavily boomer-coded.

Interesting that being concerned about corruption is for old, out of touch people.

I think what’s missing in your worldview is propaganda. Their point is really that Americans should focus on the Hunter texts; by accusing this as a psy-op they are drawing a connection between the Wagner events and the Hunter texts. They are claiming it is a distraction but what they mean is that we should be focusing on the evidence that our President is woefully corrupt.

Whatever patience I had with American "anti-establishment" right-wingers

Probably very little to begin with if you’re conflating millions of people with a discursive propaganda technique of a few Twitter accounts

Probably very little to begin with if you’re conflating millions of people with a discursive propaganda technique of a few Twitter accounts

Come on. You have people like Tucker Carlson, saying things like Ukraine blew up their own dam in just a day after the thing happened without waiting for any evidence. Admittedly, he got only a million likes, not "millions". And, I guess, most liked his statements about aliens, not about Zelensky having rat-like features.

Their point is really that Americans should focus on the Hunter texts

I usually focus on what people say, and not try to guess what they were trying to say or what they were implying. And a lot of them said that all of it is psy-ops. Another object-level statement. If they mislead or lie about object-level stuff — they are much worse than MSM. Not that it's a secret to anyone.

It seems bizarre to me that the paleocon sorts, after having been cast aside by their masters, so quickly fall back into nationalism. They endlessly complain about how identity politics are wrong because they treat groups as monolothic blocs when in fact those groups are made up of individuals that may or may not benefit from the policies being pushed, or are often just being used by grifters for cynical gains. Then they seem to completely lack the ability to take that same perspective and apply it to international relationships. It's almost like they aren't truly protesting identity politics, they are just sad that the masters hand is on a different dog.

There is no foreign poilcy that benefits Americans. There is no policy that benefits Americans because America is broken divided place full of different factions that have competing and contrary interests. The enemy of my enemy is my friend might be an exaggeration, but in these situations the enemy of my enemy is useful seems like a fair statement.

The average anti-nato person isn't rooting for Russia to take over the world and create a universal empire. They are simply rooting for their local elites to lose a bit of face and power. Yes that means the foreign pawns of those elites might also lose power, no that doesn't mean that every Ukranian is going to be tortured to death, because anti-nato sorts are capable of nuance and recognize that Ukraine, much like the US, isn't a monolith with a lockstep populace.

It's just embarrassing to see people rooting for an empire that hates them. All so they can continue with some empty moralizing, the illusion that the country has some kind of benevolent ideology and there is more to politics than power.

The average anti-nato person isn't rooting for Russia to take over the world and create a universal empire. They are simply rooting for their local elites to lose a bit of face and power.

Well, what do they think will happen after that? The local elites just go "oh, my bad, we were wrong all along, we now see the light and agree with you, Mr. Fringe Online Ideology Person"?

Other competing elites and their viewpoints gain power. Specifically in this instance the US maximalists and war profiteers that want / think they can keep the US as the sole superpower despite it's obvious decline and decay give way to the "America first" group. More isolationist and at least grudgingly accepting of a more multipolar world elites and the ideas / policy that come with them.

Instead of a Biden starting wars you get a Trump ending them. Though preferably someone that is more stable than Trump and doesn't need to dick measure for ego with rival nations as often.

Instead of a Biden starting wars you get a Trump ending them.

A fairly odd statement, considering that Trump ended no wars and Biden, rather famously ended the War in Afghanistan (while not starting new ones, in the sense of American troops fighting and dying).

When it came to foreign policy, the practical differences between Trump and Biden were minor and they both hewed to a longrunning general line of American foreign policy. Clearly in this sense they both belong of the category of "local elites".

Only really true in a technical sense. Trump negotiated the 2021 Withdrawal and oversaw the reduction of troops. Biden delayed it from May to August. It was clear the establishment, whom Biden represents, wanted the war to continue as they had been dragging their feet and not actually preparing things. Establishment politicians in congress also regularly tried to stop other troop reductions during Trump's term.

like so

https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/03/politics/ndaa-trump-germany-troop-cuts/index.html

bipartisan from what I remember, but the isolationist elite / warmonger elite distinction isn't as straightforward as Republican / Democrat despite Trump and Biden being republican and democrat and being the most notable representatives of the respective factions.

A low effort comment follows:

This kind of blatant QAnon retardation bothers me a lot less than the supposedly smart groyper dissident right types who spend all day posting obscure remixes of old memes behind a dozen layers of irony who believe that they’re fomenting some kind of actual uprising. The former are just kind of dumb, Alex Jones listeners. The latter sometimes have actual intellectual potential, but they waste it on feeling superior.

Say what you will about Russia (and I agree with the general consensus that this entire war and the last decade of Putin’s presidency has been disastrous), stuff is happening there. American dissident rightists don’t believe in making anything happen, even on a localized level they’ll shirk responsibility to, say, get married young and have a big family. These people are, as Karlin (ironically) accurately suggests, detestable. It’s the entire BAP mindset of laughing at your enemies while (with great effort) curating an air of impossibly grand smugness. Blah blah Ancient Greece blah blah masculinity blah blah semi-un-ironic gayposting blah blah all our enemies are evil and satanic blah blah mocking other people with almost the same ideology for not being radical or cruel enough blah blah [thread]posting about how everything is so much worse than you had imagined blah blah imagine engaging with mainstream politics lmao what a loser etc etc etc… If I was Robin DiAngelo herself I could not have imagined a better vehicle to destroy any hope for the Anglophone right than the void of promise that is dissident right twitter.

The big lesson for Western rightists should be simple: get off twitter at all costs. As a platform it encourages insincerity, vindictiveness, needless pile-ons (most importantly within movements) and wanton posturing over genuine promise.

What keeps going through my mind, apart from worrying how this will end and what the geopolitical implications are, of course, is how embarrassing it would be a Russia Stronk shill type right now. No matter how this ends, this sort of shit does not actually happen in nations that are actually stronk.

I repeat myself from previous threads, but a continuous talking point for Z patriots and their scarce American/Western hype men has been that Ukraine is embarrassing, cringe, Reddit etc. "fake nation", unlike Russia with its 1000 years of history and a populace willing to give their lives for the Motherland. It certainly, once again, seems that Ukraine is dozens of times more "real" than Russia, in the sense that Ukrainians have (after 2022, at least) been relatively able to keep an united patriotic front instead of tearing each other apart in a madcap struggle for power.

Yup, Russian nationalists love to refer to Ukraine as the "country 404", the failed state that doesn't exist.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/страна_404

or "a temporary geographical misunderstanding".

in the sense that Ukrainians have (after 2022, at least) been relatively able to keep an united patriotic front instead of tearing each other apart in a madcap struggle for power.

..has there been any 'madcap struggle for power' in Russia except for the one psychopathic caterer making a very abortive attempt at a coup ?

And as to Ukrainian 'united patriotic front', they've been extremely statist and punitive, and have long ago ran out of volunteers for the meat grinder, and resorted to ever more desperate searches for bodies to stop shrapnel with.

they've been extremely statist and punitive

Any proof? I consider that an exaggeration on par with the rightist claim that the US is super oppressive because they imprisoned several participants of Jan 6. Just like the right claims that Ukraine is THE most (literally, the most, or one of the most) corrupt counties in the world. I mean, they are on the level of Peru or Indonesia. Rightist also don't talk a lot about descent of Hungary into corruption, which is curious (just 9 points above Ukraine in Corruption Perception Index).

tl;dr Boo Outgroup

This comment is low effort and contributes nothing, and you have a pattern of posting low effort sneers. Knock it off or you won't be posting.

Does the parent comment contribute anything other than “boo outgroup $[nonsense gpt quality restatings of my outgroup is boo]”?

Ok, I will post high effort sneers like the rest of the posters from now on.

If you post sneers, you will be banned.

If you think someone else is posting sneers, report the post.

I did, OP is directly quoting me in that "completely oblivious" section in an obvious low-effort (effort doesn't equate to word count, despite what mods here believe) boo outgroup post. I reported and called him out on it and as is more and more common in the west these days the authorities ignore the crime and go after the person calling it out.

It's a running problem. Someone posts a 5000 word (((Parentheses))) screed on here and you have no idea what to do about it, maybe they get a warning several thread derailments later. Someone calls the poster a schizo moron (which they are) and they're banned.

You and @firmamenti:

People are allowed to disagree with you and say they think your perspective is wrong. It's not a "low effort sneer" to write a long post about why they think you are wrong, even if being quoted and told you're wrong makes you feel bad. It is a low effort sneer to write a one-liner like you did.

A thing that repeatedly happens here is that a rightist will post a tirade about how leftists are wrong and bad, or a leftist will post a tirade about how rightists are wrong and bad. Predictably, leftists will report the former and rightists will report the latter.

These are people who report posts based on vibes and feelings. They'd be fine with the post if the polarities were reversed.

You not liking a post because it criticizes you or your beliefs does not make it a "boo outgroup" post.

(effort doesn't equate to word count, despite what mods here believe)

This is not what the mods here believe.

and as is more and more common in the west these days the authorities ignore the crime and go after the person calling it out.

Yes, yes, we mod the way we do because we're just part of modern Western degeneration. But no, what's happening here is you decided something is a "crime" that wasn't, and you decided therefore the rules don't apply to you.

It's a running problem. Someone posts a 5000 word (((Parentheses))) screed on here and you have no idea what to do about it,

We have lots of ideas what to do about it. We might not act as you would wish us to act.

Someone calls the poster a schizo moron (which they are) and they're banned.

Correct. Don't call people schizo morons.

The outgroup that OP is booing is not my ingroup. It's just annoying to me that these sorts of blatant low-effort LLM-tier posts somehow are allowed when they are very obvious rule violations.

You are right, that outgroup would usually say something about "glownigger psy-ops" or "pro-nafo trannies" instead of LLM ;-)

  • -13

LLM-tier posts

Do you mean Large Language Model or LandLord Messiah here? Although I don't suppose I really matters...

Nothing worse than what gets posted on the regular here. Except it might be targeted toward the right vs left

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