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Rage Fueled rant: What is with the intellectual bankruptcy on Ukraine?
I'm not talking about fog of war stuff, or always erroring towards one side... even the most stern eyed realist struggles with emotions infecting analysis...
I'm talking about respected, degree holding, prominent figures... who have built careers around the dispassion of their analysis, engaging openly in the worst, laziest, most childish, intellectual abuses when it comes to Ukraine.
I was listening to a commentator, i had followed for quite some time, and thought of as quite dispassionate (won't link him... he's dead to me) who just opened a video declaring that "The Ukraine conflict is one of the clearest examples of good vs. evil in the past century"
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set aside everything else... set aside your faction in the culture war, set aside what you think of the war...
Can you think of another war where this language would be tolerated from an allegedly dispassionate subject matter expert?
"The Second Libyan civil war (2014-2020) was the clearest example of good vs. evil in the 21st century", "The 2014 Gaza War was a matter of Good vs. Evil", "Gulf War 1 was really about Good vs. Evil", "the Falklands was a clear example of Good vs. Evil", "The Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia was entirely a matter of good vs. evil (though there you could make the case... they were fighting the Khmer Rouge)", "The US invasion of Grenada... really just a matter of good vs. evil", "The Sino-Indian war was really a matter of good vs. evil", "The bay of pigs invasion, when you get down to it, was about good vs. evil", "The French War in Algeria was a clear matter of Good vs. Evil", "The Spanish civil war was a true contest of good vs. evil", "The Irish war of Independence was really a conflict of Good vs. Evil"... WW1? Good vs. Evil. The Russo-Japanese war? Absolutely good vs. evil, had to stop the yellow menace. The Boer war? Entirely good vs. evil (though again there you could make the case... the British, Canadian, and Australian contingent invented the concentration camp in that war to deal with the Rebellious ethnic Dutch colonist...The Boer, the scum race of the Transvaal)
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If you heard any figures saying these were matters of "Good vs. Evil" you'd immediately discount them and probably think them some anti-intellectual freak. In my first year history course I received a D on an essay for an anachronistic, sides taking, argument 1/1000th as egregious. (I argued the attitude expressed by a Ming dynasty diplomat describing India could be interpreted as "Westward Orientalism")
This figure would be embarrassed describing any other war in such terms... hell I'd never even heard him use such language discussing the second world war...
And yet the 2022 Russo-Ukraine war... that's the war so egregious he'll throw intellectual impartiality to the wind in the name of sheer denunciation.
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It's not even the most egregious war currently being fought within 1000km of the Black sea. That infamy belongs either to the reignited Nagorno-Karabakh war where Azerbaijan and Turkey are trying to squelch the young democracy in Armenia, or the ongoing conflict in Syria where turkey is likewise trying to Squelch the increasingly autonomous Kurdistan and its various democratic movements ... We don't hear about these conflicts though, because Turkey is a NATO member and a keystone of Europe's treaties to keep migrants out.
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I could grasp this, though not respect it, if this figure was somehow tied up in the US establishment and had career opportunities riding on it... but he's well independent of that. Just likes the coolaid.
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This trend i also egregious if you consider the rhetoric around the Ukraine war... That its fought for democracy, that Putin is an Autocrat... that this is a war for freedom....
Such as the freedom to criticize your government? Do you? Nope, just criticizing the people the government and media tells me to criticize.
The applause signs around words apparently being more important than any meaning the words themselves might have.
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Was this what it was like in 2002-2003 when Afghanistan and Iraq were starting? Did every remotely public intellectual drop their standards this quickly? I remember the Anti-war movement being more prominent at the time... Was that only after the fact?
Or is the Anti-war movement silent because this is Putin and he's now coded pro-trump and Anti-gay... (yet somehow everyone else in central Eurasia isn't)
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Sorry if this is ranting... I actually respected this commentator and this combined with other things was just a remarkable intellectual slide... I feel dirty... like the time engaging with him left me dumber somehow, and now I have to go back through ideas I first heard from him and check for the rot.
Yeah, in this case war is so prominent in large part because it is happening in Europe and Europeans got scared. And "because white people are dying this time" is fairly accurate reason for why is so prominent.
And also because Russia escalates and it is a good occasion to reduce its power and plans before in directly attacks NATO member and USA will need to decide whether they want
NATO collapse
credibly threaten nuclear war
Nice to see USA capable of more long term planning than Russia with CSTO that just collapsed (Armenia).
But it is not changing that it is quite clear case of good vs evil. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 (doing massive damage to any attempts to give up nuclear weapons by anyone else in future), annexed Crimea, shot down civilian airliner, proceeded to wage war in East. And more recently started full scale invasion that killed thousands (and total death count likely crossed 200 000).
Russia is clear invader and all their stated reasons are lies and in direct conflict in reality. Russia has brought neo-nazi units into Ukraine to hunt down Jewish president, murders thousands Russian-language speakers to protect them and destroys primarily cities where they live. Russia claiming to be threatened by NATO empties bases in Kaliningrad and on border with Finland. 1st Guards Tank Army was recently mauled.
It is a pure imperialism annexation war, with things like deportation of children, declaration that Ukrainian identify is not existing and attempting to destroy it, large scale destruction, looting of anything from washing machines through cars to radiators, widespread rape, torture and murder...
The best that can be said that during WW II they behaved even worse, so there is some civilizational progress.
In this case chronic contrarianism is not helpful.
One of? I agree, though within last century we had a lot of such conflicts. Like Poland getting invaded by Germany-Russia alliance to take example of turbo-evil countries invading really flawed country, which nevertheless can be accurately described as good vs evil. Despite that Poland had a lot of issues. More than modern Ukraine has.
I have seen no evidence Russia wasn't largely supported by the populations of Crimea and the Donbass indeed both regions have recruited large forces in the past 8 years to resist Ukrainian agression against the independent republics, and Ukraine's ethnic and linguistic war against its russian speeaking minority certainly hasn't had made me sympathetic to them.
Ukraine is a corrrupt authoritarian country that has been commiting cultural if not actual genocide against its russian minority since 2014... This isn't Hitler invading Poland
Pre-WWII Poland similarly suppressed the culture and language of their large Ukrainian and Belarusian minorities, so the situations are in fact very similar. The Soviet Union justified its conquest of the eastern half of Poland by claiming that they're liberating these oppressed minorities.
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And somehow this forces were recruited mostly among Russian soldiers that visited with Russian equipment, up to anti-air system that shot down civilian airliner (and this specific Buk system with missing missile returned to Russia).
In other words, sometimes negating mainstream media just makes you repeating a different propaganda that is less truthful.
Yes, BBC and CNN are manipulating and often lying. But Lavrov and whatever sources you use are much worse than that on this topic.
In Crimea maybe, but I have seen also no evidence that annexation into Russia had a real majority. To speak nothing about supermajority. And no, "referendum" setup by Russia without oversight with Russian army standing around obviously does not count.
In Donbass? Support for what? Autonomy had serious support, peaceful annexation into Russia had minimal support. Multiyear war and turning Mariupol into mass grave had no support.
[citation needed]
Especially for deliberate mass murder claims (I guess that you mean by "actual genocide"?).
And not some official Russian propaganda.
Ideally, not something where Russians are 10 or 100 times worse. Somehow one side invaded and keeps bombing cities, shot down civilian airliner, deports people and Lavrov claimed that no attack is happening both while invasion was prepared and weeks after it started.
Cultural genocide is defined as the purposeful elimination of a culture with a group of people especially including attempts to break linguistic continuity.
I'm a Canadian who has to hear about how residential schools were "genocide" against the native population multiple times a week at land acknowledgements before events, in PSAs put out endlessly on radio, TV, and youtube ads and you better damn well believe I'm going to hold the woke's puppet regime to the exact same standards of what constitutes genocide that they want to hold white Canadians to... Especially when murder of civilians, often over stuff as simple as social media posts, are rampant in Ukraine.
I am not from Canada and I am not at all responsible neither for residential schools nor ongoing handling of that
Are you claiming that anything even close in scale to what Canada did in this schools for native people is happening in Ukrainian schools?
are you withdrawing claims of "actual genocide against its russian minority since 2014" - mentioned by you in distinction from cultural genocide?
"Especially when murder of civilians, often over stuff as simple as social media posts, are rampant in Ukraine." - I want to remind you that Russia invaded Ukraine, not other way around so it is hard to put blame on Ukrainians for Russia bombing cities.
"woke's puppet regime" - if you think that Ukraine is strongly woke then you are quite confused. And they are getting substantial support but are quite far from being puppeteed by either side.
"multiple times a week at land acknowledgements before events, in PSAs put out endlessly on radio, TV, and youtube ads" - wat.
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