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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
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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:
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.
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.
..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.
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).
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