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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   26339 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 25, 2023

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I started reading and thinking about Theodore Kaczynski's Industrial Society And It's Future around the time that he died and everyone was talking about it. I think everyone was talking about it in rather generous terms, mining it for the most truthful and insightful things and only talking about that. I think that's excesively generous, considering it came to be known to us thanks to a homicidal terroristic bombing campaign. I think it deserves to be cut to the core of it's true arguments that he believed justified his bombing campaign. And I also think that if you actually do so, it's pretty low quality. Here is the original text of it if you care to verify or make a counter-argument.

The core of, and most important thing to remember about Industrial Society and it's Future is the Power Process argument, as written starting in paragraph 33. TK's argument is that in order to be truly happy and satisfied with life, a person must need to exert substantial effort, labor, and creativity towards satisfying the most basic physical needs of food, water, shelter, and security. Exerting their creative efforts towards other pursuits, including art, science, engineering, etc. isn't good enough, it's got to be for core survival. Exerting substantial effort in a conventional job, earning money, and using that money to purchase the elements of survival is also not good enough, it has to be direct. This is his definition of "freedom" - one is "free" in his opinion if they need to exert substantial effort directly towards basic survival. Thus, industrial society is fundamentally destructive to "freedom" in this definition in that it enables the majority of humanity to satisfy their needs of survival very easily and reliably, usually by doing things that have no direct relation to those needs. See him doubling down on this in paragraph 94.

I believe this argument is fundamentally nonsensical. Perhaps our society is lost and missing something, but I'm doubtful that large-scale hunter-gatherer societies (or at least as large scale as such societies can be) are overall substantially happier and more satisfied with life. It may be true that some individuals who are disaffected from mainstream society for various reasons are happier in such a situation, but I don't think society as a whole is. I frankly doubt it for individuals too - how many such people ever truly disconnect fully from industrial society and stay that way? I don't think TK is has any experience in anthropology, or has spent any significant amount of time with societies that currently do live in ways similar to what he advocates. Maybe he should have spent a few years living with the Amish or something before going on a bombing campaign, or visited some primitive tribes that are still around in various parts of Africa and South America.

He has some other interesting observations, but that's the core of it and why I wholly reject the philosophy.

One of his other points is around how society tends to bend people to fit it, rather than adjusting to fit people. Maybe there's a little point in how hard it sometimes tries to bend people. But there are plenty of options out there already for other ways to live, if you are willing to go looking for them and actually adopt them. In fact, it's not really "society" trying to bend people in my opinion, it's usually the people themselves or their close family members trying to fit in. Are "we" supposed to go find the guy who thinks he should try anti-depressants to fit in better and tell him he really ought to try joining a sailboat crew first instead? Maybe it's your job to realize you don't like your place in society and change it. And however you decide to deal with your disaffection with society, what gives you the right to claim you know what's best for everyone? Doesn't the fact that you are disaffected from society fundamentally mean that you don't understand it and aren't by any measure qualified to speak for it?

Speaking of people not fitting into society, what happens when it goes the other way? If we actually adopt his supposed preferred lifestyle and it goes exactly the way he hopes it does, I'd bet anything at least a few people would think that running water, grocery stores full of food, and antibiotics are actually pretty nice, can I please go back to that? Will the result of that just be, tough shit, this is all there is, starve and die if you don't like it? Has he done any sort of research or experiment at all to determine that 100% of humanity will actually be happer living like this, even when some of them starve to death because a harvest or hunt went bad for some reason and there's no such thing as long-distance trade, or they watch their loved ones die of things that are fixable in industrial society but pre-industrial hunter-gatherers are helpless against?

I think the bigger point though is - what do you want for the future of the Human Race?

If we go TK's way, we will be hunter-gatherers chasing buffalo around and picking berries forever. Your kids and their kids as far into the future as you want to go will never live any better than you. Some day, the rising output of the sun will destroy the Earth's biosphere, or maybe we get hit by an asteroid or gamma ray burst or something, and the entire human race goes extinct. We won't have a prayer of even knowing it's coming, much less doing anything about it, because being too busy working on basic survival to notice or think about such things is apparently the correct way to live. We were given this tremendous gift of intelligence, by evolution or God or whatever you believe, and we're supposed to just throw it in the trash because some guy was sad?

Or we go our own way and take industrial society as far as it can go. Maybe we build awesome spaceships and colonize the stars. Maybe we conduct diplomacy as equals with alien civilizations. Maybe we turn ourselves into a global hive mind somehow. Or maybe we blow ourselves up with antimatter bombs or get turned into paperclips by our superintelligent AIs or get enslaved by hostile aliens. Who knows what the future holds, but it sounds a lot better than being hunter-gatherers forever.

a person must need to exert substantial effort, labor, and creativity towards satisfying

Marx spoke of alienation (Entfremdung), proletariat losing its will to live; it exerting significant effort during the course of performing its job. Renumeration was for him insufficent, labouring masses still required an intermediary between it and his goals. This lack of directness deforms its minds, as now it must burden itself with knowledge of temporary and society dependent constructs and interests not his own, in order to achieve his true desires. As efficiency demands greater and greater specialization, its minds grow distant from eachother and fill up with ever minuter tricks to gain producitivity.

Marx also took the same research approach as Kaczynski, which was to sit in a room and imagine how other people felt. The fact that two basement dwellers came up with the same idea is not an endorsement of that idea.

I have a great deal of disdain for both sets of ideas, so I am perhaps not being maximally charitable. However, there are certain lines of argumentation where the only real counter to the ideas is to say "have you bothered asking anyone else?" This feels like a consistent problem among certain types of thinkers. They go off into isolation and use their own brain as a model for how everyone else might think and feel, and to a large extent they really nail how they themselves feel, and describe it in such a logical way that other people can imitate that line of reasoning and come to feel the same way.

They have not come upon a universal way of thinking about their topic, but they and their followers believe it to be universal. When they start trying to implement it and get predictable pushback they come up with all sorts of pet theories about how those who disagree with them have somehow been subverted by evil elements. These ideas can be very effective mind viruses. But their implementation in the real world will always leave a great deal to be desired, because there was never any strong connection between the author and the real world.

I just randomly read TK’s manifesto this week and I thought of the alienation of labor. They both struck a chord with me that they are obviously correct about a problem in a society.

I also think they are wrong about the solution. That is, they’ve done half the work.

I'm not entirely convinced they are even correct about the problem.

We don't know for certain that people in hunter-gatherer societies also don't feel some sort of alienation with the labor they do. Our translations of current hunter-gatherer societies aren't great, we aren't even sure if they can count most of the time. And by definition they usually don't write anything down.

It reminds me more of the common complaint by marxists that the workers are forced to either work or starve. As if this is somehow a valid criticism of capitalism. Its a criticism of life and the universe in general. Sorry we can't just subsist on mana falling from heaven.

In my model there are more steps, and they've barely done any of the work:

  1. Identify the problem in a place / time / culture.
  2. Identify a place / time / culture where the problem does not happen.
  3. Understand how the noun in #2 avoids the problem.
  4. Use that understanding to create a solution.
  5. Test solution small scale.
  6. Test / fully implement large scale.
  7. If #5 or #6 fail, go back to #2 and double check everything.

It reminds me more of the common complaint by marxists that the workers are forced to either work or starve.

Modern Marxists, but not historic ones. Lenin and Stalin were, for a couple of atheists, rather fond of "He who does not work, neither shall he eat."

We don't know for certain that people in hunter-gatherer societies also don't feel some sort of alienation with the labor they do.

IIRC when they tried explaining depression to hunter-gatherers, the hunter-gatherers straight-up thought the idea was absurd.

I don't think all the West's problems come from this, but this is very definitely a big part of depression.

Most people have that reaction to depression. Unless they themselves are depressed. And even then if you are the one weird person with an affliction you are better off hiding it.

Scott has an article (book review?) about mental illness and social contagion. He talks about the inuit a hunter gatherer society. I didn't get the sense you could ever get an inuit to admit to depression, they'd basically be signing up for a lifetime of being made fun of for it.

I know he reviewed Crazy Like Us, but the Inuit weren't mentioned.

Well, I know I managed to somehow generate the same hypothesis as Kaczynski despite never actually getting around to reading his manifesto. Don't remember the details of how I came to the conclusion, though.

(Of course, physical activity and social contact per se are also relevant.)

Should be noted that much of Marx-ISM was the handiwork of Friedrich Engels, who based his theories on his experiences of working-class life in Manchester, which he both observed personally to a great degree and also encountered through his working-class paramour Mary Burns.

Maybe he should have spent a few years living with the Amish or something before going on a bombing campaign, or visited some primitive tribes that are still around in various parts of Africa and South America.

Didn’t he literally move to a shack in the woods?

Yes, but that would only let him know how he enjoyed the survival lifestyle, not how everyone else would respond.

He did, but it's not clear to what extent he was actually living the kind of life he advertised, which would include getting all of his own food, water, and other supplies from nature by himself and never from stores or other things sourced from the "industrial economy". At the very least, the materials required for the bombing campaign most likely couldn't have been built without outside supplies. I rather doubt he did considering how little knowledge of living off the land he started with and how much time he must have devoted to the bombing campaign.

There's also the point of safety nets. In TK's advocated world, if you fail to hunt and gather or farm enough food, then you starve and possibly die, tough shit. Living in a shack in the woods in the United States, even if you mostly get your own food, you still have the option of going to a store if you fall short, or to a hospital if you get injured or sick. Maybe he would voluntarily refrain from those options, but I don't think we know.

I believe this argument is fundamentally nonsensical. Perhaps our society is lost and missing something, but I'm doubtful that large-scale hunter-gatherer societies (or at least as large scale as such societies can be) are overall substantially happier and more satisfied with life. It may be true that some individuals who are disaffected from mainstream society for various reasons are happier in such a situation, but I don't think society as a whole is. I frankly doubt it for individuals too - how many such people ever truly disconnect fully from industrial society and stay that way? I don't think TK is has any experience in anthropology, or has spent any significant amount of time with societies that currently do live in ways similar to what he advocates. Maybe he should have spent a few years living with the Amish or something before going on a bombing campaign, or visited some primitive tribes that are still around in various parts of Africa and South America.

I think he’s sort of half right. I think what seems to work well for most people is a sense of accomplishment especially in doing something physical. I don’t see that it means literally going out and living in the woods. But the kinds of things that seem to be associated with well-being — physical activity, a sense of affiliation with other people, and a job in which they get a sense that their work matters — are somewhat similar to what TK is suggesting. Even time in nature is good for mental health. But even going that far, I don’t see it as following that we should go live in the woods and farm with a sharpened sticks. You can have those things without going that far. You can take up sports especially team sports. You can go hiking or fishing or rock climbing. You can found or join a group of people to do good in the world.

The line about living with the Amish misses the depth of the technology stack. Every-one, including the Amish, benefit from access to high carbon steels. All the chisels and saws that carpenters use in a low-tech wooden life-style depend on heat treated steels that retain their cutting edge. Making the chisels and saws depends on hardened high carbon steel being harder than normalised high carbon steel, sufficiently harder that you can use files and hacksaws to form the blanks for your chisels and saws before you harden them in their turn with more heat treatment. It is all very delicate, depending on chemistry and metallurgy to get quench hardening to work right ("Silver steel" has added chromium to improve through hardening. Metallurgists need microscopes to see what is happening with the grains in the steel). (Things have moved on. Now-a-days you heat treat steel parts before cutting them to shape using carbide tooling,...)

I wondered if the Amish use cement. Maybe just lime mortar. It is a tough question. Yes, and attention to price and efficiency seduces you, so that you end up tied to industrial cement making. No, and your building techniques are in some ways pre-Roman; who wants to go back that far?

We are mostly ignorant of the long history of our technology stack and use phrases such as "back to nature" in ways that do no withstand scrutiny

You're mostly right. My statement wasn't meant to say "TK should go live with the Amish because they're exactly like what he proposes" - I don't think they are either. What I think is more like, the Amish are 70%-ish of the way from mainstream society to what TK says he wants, but they actually exist now, are accessible, and decent odds you could find an Amish church that would let you live with them for a while. Living with them would let him learn a lot about what it's actually like to live in such a society, how to live decently well with minimal contact with the industrial world, and get an idea about what it would be like to go further.

You are spot on and thinking about it I realise that I've seen TK's the lack of incrementalism before.

I was listening to radio broadcast about the Utopia Experiment. Dylan Evans sees total collapse coming and sets up his simple living experiment to try to get ahead of it. But quite early on, his attempts to make soap come unstuck because he has already given up the internet, so he cannot watch the "How to make soap" videos on You Tube. That is when I twigged that the story was going to turn into a mental health crisis. Going all in, rather than plotting a path and taking reasonable sized steps is usually a sign of mental illness. And so it was in Dylan Evans' case.

Reminiscent of Christopher McCandless too.

He did, and then they built roads around the place he'd retired to and destroyed it, which he claims ultimately gave him the resolve to start his bombing campaign.

Ted Kaczynski always struck me as the smart guy who was pissed off that the world wasn't being run in a way he approved of. He also struck me someone who suffered from profound social isolation, no matter where he was. I remember an interview with his brother David describing a failed hiking trip where they tried to live off the land. They couldn't forage enough food and David turned to some store-bought granola bars he'd brought. Ted had a massive temper tantrum about it which caused David to pack up and head back to the trail head. It's not like David was some citified yuppie either, he spent some time living off the grid in the Texas desert. He just wasn't the same as Ted and Ted was angry about it.

I also really don't think we can discount the effect his mental illness had on him. Without it he probably would have ended up just another North Pond Hermit.

One can blame this on the MK-ultra study or autism, but what Ted had is very simple: he's a uniquely principled man.

Reasoning oneself into violence from rational application of first principles isn't uncommon. And such a strong conviction is not only useful, I think it's admirable, and admired. Richard Stallman has a similar virtue if for principles that did not require violence.

Discounting Ted as mentally ill is something he was extremely keen for people not to do, and I think he has a point because it's a cop out for people to refuse to contemplate the disturbing: that maybe some of the failings of our world are worth killing for and that we do not do so more out of cowardice than practicality.

Being "uniquely principled" is a similar mode of failure to many rationalists: reasoning from first principles and not sanity-checking your conclusions.

You call it failure. I call it atypical but necessary.

Sometimes it is the entire world that is insane and must be reminded of it. Which is why we need people of such unyielding moral character, if in small numbers.

Sometimes it is the entire world that is insane and must be reminded of it.

This is a slogan. It isn't actually true.

I disagree to such a powerful degree that it is hard to put into words.

All I can do is gesture at the whole of Abrahamic civilization and it's namesake.

Discounting Ted as mentally ill is something he was extremely keen for people not to do

Crazy person claims he's totally sane, everyone else is nuts. Film at 11.

that maybe some of the failings of our world are worth killing for and that we do not do so more out of cowardice than practicality

I never see this kind of lionization of ISIS or the Weathermen ETA in The Motte /ETA, so you'll forgive me if I'm skeptical of the hagiography.

Edit: missing a few words

Fair, amended.

Crazy person claims he's totally sane, everyone else is nuts. Film at 11.

How many such people convince the jury and expert witnesses that they are?

Ted wasn't crazy. He was evil. His judgement was not impaired. He had full knowledge of the consequences of his actions and he still decided that killing was okay to achieve his political goals.

You and many others really enjoy the luxury of thinking nobody sane can just decide to start making people explode. But it is a delusion. There are endless perfectly sane justifications to kill one's fellow man and the reason it doesn't happen all the time is the one guy with the biggest stick renting it for money and nothing else.

I never see this kind of lionization of ISIS or the Weathermen, so you'll forgive me if I'm skeptical of the hagiography.

I have a simple explanation for this and it's that you haven't looked for it. I've seen plenty of it. For those groups and all others. For the IRA, for the Confederacy, for Hezbollah, for Zapatistas, for CJNG, for all manners of people with guns and an idea.

And I must say I appreciate the core of every single instance of it. People of great evil still possess this one rare and venerable virtue: they are great.

Romanticizing armed revolt and crime is a universal cultural touchstone. And wherever you live you are most likely heir to such a hagiography, for the people who founded your own society and its righteous promise of peace and order had to be knaves of this same kind to make it happen.

He had full knowledge of the consequences of his actions and he still decided that killing was okay to achieve his political goals.

His actions didn't achieve his political goals. Considering the backlash too, the net consequences of his actions might have been a negative for his political goals.

Undertaking actions contrary to your goals (even for sociopaths whose goals don't include "fewer bombing victims") is only rational if there was reason to expect the exact opposite result instead and failure is just bad luck. And yet "murdering people is bad PR" should have been an easily foreseen consequence; it was not an unpredictable outcome.

I don't really understand how you can say that. He did get his demands met, his manifesto published, his ideas heard by the world and ultimately created a huge cult following. He went from being a crank in the woods to one of the most influential philosophers of his decade. One serious people find relevant and reference to this day and not merely to denounce him. Is that not political success?

It may be unfortunate, but killing people was a very successful way of promoting his ideas, and Ellul's brand of techno-skepticism is now infinitely more popular because of his actions that it would have been without. However many caveats people put in front of saying it, I've yet to meet someone who utterly denies the man had a point and his descriptive analysis was devoid of merit. And none of those people would have heard of him if he didn't use violence.

You may have had a point if we were talking about Timothy McVeigh, who was apparently truly surprised his revenge didn't trigger a second american revolutionary war, but I do not think for a second Ted ever thought his crusade would end in his life, by his hand. It was always about seeding his ideas. Which despite the ignominious cost, was an indeniable success.

I simply believe it is in my interest to smear, discount and erase the ideas of those who try to spread them through terrorism. What they have to say is not valuable enough to warrant even one death.

Then you must erase all of humanity's patrimony. For it all has been spread at the point of the sword.

This is a childish notion. All ideas, including the want to prevent terrorism, require death. You just like your tribute to be paid behind your back.

It would take a rather broad standard of "requiring death" to encompass all ideas. I've heard all that jazz before. "If you don't take the jab they will Literally Kill You [if you care to escalate to that point]!".

What did TK offer in exchange for his oh so principled will to murder? Security? Prosperity? Stability? Justice? No, he killed for publicity to try and get people to read words he wasn't the first or the last to write, and those other ideologues have a clear advantage of not being terrorists.

Conviction is a dime a dozen. I could find thousands of convicted schizos on the Internet. Men with unshakable beliefs who are sadly only correct twice a day.

It would take a rather broad standard of "requiring death" to encompass all ideas.

Making it subjective won't let you easily escape from this. All morality up and including some devotion to truth itself requires violence to be enacted in the world. Yes, all laws are mandates to kill and that's not speaking broadly, it's just how it is.

The State is by nature a terrorist organization insofar as terrorism is political violence. It exists for that sole purpose. And saying unsanctioned political violence is evil is only saying that one prefers an instantiated order over another one. Which is fine, but rests solely on moral evaluation and no other criteria.

he killed for publicity

You've decided this isn't an advantage and are just begging the question. It is an advantage. Ellul was never as popular as Ted.

Yeah, you can nod along with TK on the alienation of modernity until he arrives at mass murder. Starvation is certainly one way to bring focus to life!

Estimates of the maximum extent of hunter gatherer populations are 1-20 million people total. Even if everyone were down with starving/freezing/baking to death 99.999% of the population in one year, we would have a prisoners dilemma in getting there. Any hunter gatherer society would be trivially conquered/genocided/colonized by any defecting society, of which there would surely be one because I’ll be in it.

An important missing element in your description is that you need to be doing things that are hard but that you can actually succeed in. The "work hard" --> "achieve something you couldn't have without the hard work" cycle is important. Whether it's for literal basic survival or for some "surrogate" activity as he calls them seems a little bit less important to me.

A lot of the ennui plaguing people in modern society seems like it stems from everything either being trivially easy to get or completely unobtainable regardless of effort, so there's not much left that can fit into the power process. Technology has moved a lot of the "you have to work hard for it" things like food and shelter into the "trivially easy" category. We're left with "become a celebrity," "become a billionaire," etc., which require a ton of luck and grinding will only get you so far.

Interesting thesis. Perhaps this is part of why some people find things like kids, homeownership, getting degrees, getting promoted at work as meaningful, since those all fit in between "easy" and "almost impossible".

There's a rule here for Make your point reasonably clear and plain. It's not clear to me what your point is, so why don't you just say it, whatever it is? Why are you making it all about me and my experiences? Exactly what is the "lie" that you are referring to at the end?

The lie of the social contract, whig history, and man's capability to set himself aside from the constraints of nature -- he seems (to me) to be saying reasonably clearly.

For me it is a reasonable answer. There is a bias that you are upfront with that the ideas you are critiquing are from a terrorist, thus you are not separating the ideas from the man. But the thing is that it is not TK who is the originator of the ideas. It is Ellul! The core is simple, humanity is not supposed to serve the "machine" but the "machine" is supposed to serve humanity! And you wrote several paragraphs saying that we are supposed to serve the machine because it benefits all of humanity. I'm not so sure...

The parent I responded to there had written a longer response with more detail that I was meaning to respond to now, but I guess he deleted it. (It was pretty long but reasonably charitable and clear IMO, so I thought it deserved a reasonably high-effort response). Oh well, I guess I'll say most of the same stuff here.

I was actually biased to think moderately positively of TK before I read his piece, as most of the areas I read seem at least modestly biased towards him. I wrote about it a bit on this site. I wrote in that thread what actually changed my mind. I had basically presumed that his ideas were too censored and too difficult to get out there such that it drove him to terrorism. But he actually wrote himself in that very essay in P96 that he did violence because he did have opportunities to put it out there, but not to be distributed to his satisfaction. As I wrote there, I reject the idea that you get to do violence because nobody thinks your ideas are interesting. If nobody thinks your ideas are interesting enough to pay attention to, you should work on improving them and presenting them better, not blow people up.

That Mr. Ellul wrote similar things I think more proves my point than refutes it (I believe you both that he wrote similar things, but I'm not sure to what extent he rejected or endorsed violence to spread his ideas) - it's perfectly possible to have such views and advocate for them in normal and peaceful ways. I think that, considering the public image TK has gained from his bombing campaign (since we're all talking about him), it's perfectly reasonable to point out the holes in his ideas and remind people that he did make the decision that his ideas were important enough to justify aggressive violence - not even towards specific people responsible for opposing him or rejecting his ideas, but people he felt were part of the industrial system that he wanted to tear down.

I also believe that part of the generous interpretation many have given to his work is due to the re-definition of freedom that he used. A casual reading of many of his sections with the implicit belief among the general public in the western world that "freedom" refers to basically classical liberalism, things like free speech, free press, rule of law, etc leads many of his ideas to sound significantly more insightful and reasonable. But once you know that he redefined it to mean the "right"/need of individuals to go through the "Power Process" of doing substantial work for their basic needs, it all sounds rather different. Whether Industrial Society is inherently destructive of "classical liberalism" freedom is yet to be determined - that could be a complex and interesting discussion. But Industrial Society being inherently destructive to "power process" freedom is trivially obvious. I have a feeling that this may have been done on purpose. An honest writer simply looking to promote his ideas rather than mislead people would pick a different word, rather than one so loaded with pre-existing cultural baggage in the West.

Parent post also seems to be accusing me of not knowing enough about nature, hunter-gatherer lifestyles, etc. Presumably this is meant to lead to an argument that such lifestyles are actually much better than I had presented them as. At least, that's the most charitable interpretation IMO, part of my issue there is that he didn't actually make an argument for whatever it is he believed, just implied that I was ignorant. If I am, please go ahead and let me know what facts you know that make the arguments less valid, don't just imply that they're there.

I could counter-argue that while I am no expert on such lifestyles, he in turn may not know much about just how complex the logistical chain is that makes available all of the modern goods that we take for granted and exactly what life may be like when they are completely impossible to obtain. I specifically mean the "safety net" concept that I mention elsewhere in this thread. It may not be terribly hard to live a lifestyle superficially similar to what is described by TK, presumably Ellul, and others - I wouldn't be surprised if the number of people in the continental US voluntarily living like that is in the hundreds of thousands. But it's only superficial if you still have the grocery store to solve any food production problems that come up, the hospital to solve any medical problems, the hardware store for any tools you can't fabricate, etc. Even if you never actually go to any of those, the mere fact that it's possible tends to change peoples' behavior. How many people volunteer to put all of those perpetually out of reach for their entire extended family for all eternity?

That Mr. Ellul wrote similar things I think more proves my point than refutes it (I believe you both that he wrote similar things, but I'm not sure to what extent he rejected or endorsed violence to spread his ideas) - it's perfectly possible to have such views and advocate for them in normal and peaceful ways.

Ellul is the originator of the ideas and he also rejected violence to spread them. Last time I checked the wikipedia article wasn't that bad. And to quote wikipedia... 'Ellul explained his view in this way: "By anarchy I mean first an absolute rejection of violence."'

I think that, considering the public image TK has gained from his bombing campaign (since we're all talking about him), it's perfectly reasonable to point out the holes in his ideas and remind people that he did make the decision that his ideas were important enough to justify aggressive violence - not even towards specific people responsible for opposing him or rejecting his ideas, but people he felt were part of the industrial system that he wanted to tear down.

This is the main reason I think you got caught in such a critical response. It is that there is no separation of the ideas that Kaczynski based on Elluls work and Kaczynskis campaign of violence. It is not clear what are Kaczynskis contributions that you are criticizing here or if you are criticizing Ellul.

I could counter-argue that while I am no expert on such lifestyles, he in turn may not know much about just how complex the logistical chain is that makes available all of the modern goods that we take for granted and exactly what life may be like when they are completely impossible to obtain. I specifically mean the "safety net" concept that I mention elsewhere in this thread. It may not be terribly hard to live a lifestyle superficially similar to what is described by TK, presumably Ellul, and others - I wouldn't be surprised if the number of people in the continental US voluntarily living like that is in the hundreds of thousands. But it's only superficial if you still have the grocery store to solve any food production problems that come up, the hospital to solve any medical problems, the hardware store for any tools you can't fabricate, etc. Even if you never actually go to any of those, the mere fact that it's possible tends to change peoples' behavior. How many people volunteer to put all of those perpetually out of reach for their entire extended family for all eternity?

The Amish reject modernity but when their children come of age they get to decide through 'Rumschpringe' if they want to join the community or get access to all of modernity has to offer. Also the Amish are not hunter-gatherers so there is that.

I'm not here to accuse you of being ignorant but I could claim that there is not enough imagination what it could mean to resist industrialized society. The ideas resisting it has continued with people of like Paul Kingsnorth. But because someone decided to mail out bombs you are rejecting the ideas around resisting "the machine" even if there are people that have ideas that predate and supersede it without violence.

The new top-level post has better in-depth discussion on the relative merits of TK vs Ellul and their ideas, so I'll leave further discussion of that point there.

I do think a necessary point here is that TK explicitly advocated for the violent overthrow of technological society worldwide. I'm not an expert on Ellul, I've only skimmed his Wikipedia article, but he doesn't seem to go that way. He makes some of the same arguments, but he seems to push for broader awareness and acceptance of his viewpoint and possibly setting up some independent communities that implement them as much as possible on a voluntary basis. I think that's a critical distinction, and a good reason why Ellul deserves tolerant consideration and discussion while TK deserves much harsher criticism.

I'm perfectly fine with the Amish and other such societies because 1. They walk the walk, actually setting up long-lasting communities to practice their lifestyle that are about as non-dependent on mainstream society as you can reasonably be while living in a first-world industrialized nation, and 2. They don't seek to impose anything on anyone - they just want to live their way, and don't care at all how anybody outside their community lives. Rumspringa is proof that even their own children are encouraged to get a real and fair view of the world outside so that they can make a legitimate, free, and fully-informed choice on whether to stay within the community or leave it. TK did the opposite - he advocated for and actively tried to force everyone else to live in the way he thought was best while not doing so himself.

It is clearly more likely that we get some kind of bizarre technological transformation in 20 years than that a collapse happens.

What's the difference? Apocalypse either way.

Oh no, we'll definitely get a social collapse before we can get ourselves singularityed. It will be a bullshit one like a mix of The Camp of the Saints with flavors of Idiocracy. Complex systems will collapse, and when that happens you will not have a proper functioning power distribution system, to speak of a global "internet" will be hilarious. More like a few hundred local networks.

Facing Facts, even fraught ones: the quest for proto-Indo-Europeans in 2023

The old belief regarding the Aryans, which preceded the Nazis, was that the Aryans (now called Proto-Indo Europeans) conquered Europe and down through Iran and India. There were different theories about the Urheimat of the Aryans. German nationalists thought the Aryan homeland was in Germany, and Indian nationalists would say it was India. In the post-war period, politically correct archaeologists insisted that the Aryan invasion theories were wrong and that Indo-European languages spread through non-violent "cultural diffusion." But this has been definitively disproved by recent genetic evidence. The old story was essentially true although it seems the Aryans most likely originated from the Russian steppe. They had several important technological advantages like domesticated horses, the wheel, and bronze so they pretty much conquered everyone and replaced a large fraction of the males over a wide territory.

Proto-Indo European studies has rapidly changed in the past 10 years as emerging genetic evidence has confirmed the old story and disproven the theories of cultural diffusion and the assertion that the Indo-Europeans left no significant genetic legacy. Razib Khan's article traces the origin of the "lost knowledge" of the Indo-European migrations and its rediscovery in the face of new evidence:

In vast regions of Northern Europe, the Bronze Age steppe herders replaced earlier farming societies, the invaders unceremoniously sweeping away all before them, which often meant the extermination of indigenous male-dominated elites (ancient DNA studies show that Neolithic farmers too structured their societies around male kin-groups)...

Nevertheless, these analyses buttressing the idea of migrations out of the steppe fell out of fashion after the mid-20th century. Not, crucially, because they were systematically discarded based on evidence, but because they grew irredeemably stained by contemporary politics. Philology was highly concentrated in the German-speaking world; in addition to Müller, the list of Germans in the field includes Friedrich Nietzsche and Jacob Grimm. This led, in the decades before World War II, to the fatal confluence of the study of Indo-Europeans, German nationalism and eventually National Socialism. Between 1900 and 1930 the philologist and archaeologist Gustaf Kossinna hypothesized that the Corded Ware archaeological culture of early Bronze Age East-Central Europe was instrumental in the spread of Indo-European languages, and these ideas were taken up and popularized by the Nazis after he died in 1931. Because the Corded Ware Culture (CWC) flourished in Poland and Czechoslovakia, and Kossinna connected Indo-European theory with the rise of the Germans, Hitler’s annexation of these two nations was justified partly by the presumed proto-Germanic character of the CWC once indigenous to that region. Beyond Kossinna, the whole field of Indo-European studies was tainted by Nazism’s radioactivity and its repugnant social and political implications. Any model of prehistoric migration had to reckon with widespread scholarly suspicion about the concept after reflexive aversion from any thought favored by Hitler’s regime.

Steve Sailer, for his part, suggests that the rise of neo-Nietzscheans on the Dissident Right is due in part to the confirmation of the earlier, quasi-mythical stories of continental conquests by chad steppe warriors. Anecdotally I see this to be the case, with DR Twitter accounts heavily invested in Indo-European studies who closely follow the work of those like Harvard geneticist David Reich, whose lab in practice has probably done more than anyone to confirm the old story with genetic evidence.

So, is that it? Is the 1930s German model of European pre-history essentially confirmed? Not so fast, according to Khan, who tries to tackle that historical narrative from a different angle:

Despite accumulating victory upon victory, the Indo-Europeans were not, crucially, civilization-bearers. Their pastoralist world flourished atop the smoldering ruins of worlds lost, cultures that left behind hulking rough-hewn stone monuments and the faint outlines of vast villages that were once the loci of sophisticated civilizations. The early Indo-Europeans were barbarians par excellence; their arrival ushered in an age of animal competition, kill or be killed...

They emerged out of darkness, beyond the view of history, and they brought darkness to many lands they conquered, a process only finally reversed by civilization’s creeping spread. More than 1,000 years after Neolithic Europe and its grand megaliths fell to the barbarian nomads, the two traditions would fuse to set the stage for the eventual rise of Greece, Rome and the world of the Celts.

To summarize, at a high level, all indigenous Europeans are basically a genetic combination of three population groups:

  1. Proto-Indo Europeans - steppe pastoralists closely associated with Yamnaya culture
  2. Neolithic European Farmers who migrated across the European continent thousands of years before the Bronze Age
  3. Eastern/Western European Hunter-Gatherers

Khan's position goes, the Proto-Indo Europeans and their descended cultures (i.e. Corded Ware, the common ancestor of the Italo-Celtic, German, and Balto-Slavic languages) were barbarians par excellence and destroyed the fledging civilizational potential of the Neolithic farmers, a potential evidenced by their construction of megalithic structures and farming mode of societal organization. He claims that the proto-Indo Europeans, in contrast, were "not civilization-bearers", they actually hindered civilization until some vague, exogenous "civilization's creeping spread" brought civilization in spite of the Proto-Indo European conquests.

Thus, Khan presents a novel Aryan-skeptic position: dropping denial of the Völkerwanderungs due to its untenability in the face of recent genetic evidence, but challenging the presence of a civilizational quality to the Proto-Indo European people.

One point Khan makes, which I certainly agree with, is that the Aryan is a synthesis of the three aforementioned population groups, as Khan states "the two traditions [Indo-European and Neolithic Farmer] would fuse to set the stage for the eventual rise of Greece, Rome and the world of the Celts." But this position is actually not much different from the 19th century German pre-history model of Europe, as described by a speech made by Hitler as chancellor of Germany:

The German people came into being no differently than almost every truly creative civilized nation we know of in the world. A numerically small, talented race, capable of organizing and creating civilization, established itself over other peoples in the course of many centuries. It in part absorbed them, in part adapted to them. All members of our people have of course contributed their special talents to this union. It was, however, created by a nation-and-state forming elite alone. This race imposed its language, naturally not without borrowing from those it subjugated. And all shared a common fate for so long, that the life of the people directing the affairs of state became inseparably bound to the life of the gradually assimilating other members. All the while, conqueror and conquered had long become a community. This is our German people of today ... Our only wish is that all members contribute their best to the prosperity of our national life. As long as every element gives what it has to give, this element in so doing will help benefit all lives.

The operative difference, here, is that the German school of thought assigned the civilizational quality of the people foremost to the Bronze Age conqueror-elites whereas Khan assigns that quality to the conquered. Civilization followed in spite of Indo-European legacy according to Khan. Who is correct? We likely won't see serious academic study of this question, but looking at the big picture we can see hints.

There is no person alive today with 100% Yamnayan ancestry. According to David Reich:

the population that contributed genetic material to South Asia was (roughly) 60% Yamnaya [my note: European steppe ancestry], ~30% European farmer-like ancestry

The invaders of India who called themselves Aryan were already the product of this aforementioned synthesis, and today the Aryan people most closely resemble genetically Northern European peoples.

In contrast, the Sardinians provide insight into the pre-Bronze Age farmer populations, as:

Sardinia appears to harbor the highest amounts of Neolithic farmer ancestry and very little of the pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherer or Bronze Age pastoralists ancestries.

Khan's thesis doesn't pass the sanity test, the broad-range correlation in Europe appears to follow: population groups with greater Indo-European ancestry trend as nations with higher technological innovation, economic status, empire-building, and global colonization, all of which follow the modus operandi of the Indo-Europeans. The Aryan is absolutely the synthesis of all three groups, but the claim that the "Indo-Europeans were not, crucially, civilization-bearers" doesn't hold any water. Classical Greece, Rome, India, Persia, were all spawned from Indo-European cultural, genetic, and linguistic legacy after the Bronze Age invasions.

I.E studies is going to likely remain a growing area of interest in the DR. It combines genetics, history, and mythmaking in a way that fosters a positive sense of identity and aspiration for pan-European camaraderie among the right wing. It tracks with the DR model of 20th century intellectual movements as subversive towards white identity and obscuring "forbidden knowledge".

The glorification of the Indo-Europeans on the right wing also marks a shift from a liberal/conservative "white people didn't do nothing" opposition to progressive racial narratives, to a Nietzschean glorification of a Bronze Age spirit.

Classical Greece, Rome, India, Persia, were all spawned from Indo-European cultural, genetic, and linguistic legacy after the Bronze Age invasions.

Millenia later, time enough for psychopathic genes of original Indo-Europeans to be selected out and more pro-civilization traits emerge. Before it happened, Indo-Europeans achieved exactly zilch. Nothing "vague" about it, straight HBDIQ materialist science.

Razib is right, there is absolutely nothing to respect about continent size psycho killing spree, nothing to admire about people so stupid that cannot grok even idea of slavery.

Friends, stop the killing for a moment! Maybe if we leave the peasants alive and make them work for us, we can live well in big houses instead of huts and dugouts?

NO! BLOOD! GORE! DEATH! KILL! KILL! KILL!

...

I.E studies is going to likely remain a growing area of interest in the DR. It combines genetics, history, and mythmaking in a way that fosters a positive sense of identity and aspiration

Perhaps if you aspire to be school shooter or serial killer. If you have higher ambitions, the IE "legacy" has nothing to offer you.

Pre-history was a violent time, Western Hunter Gatherers were likewise displaced by the early European farmers. It's pretty tone deaf to compare school shooters to the migration of pre-historical population groups and subsequent violence, which was a pretty common experience across the world. The sheer scale of the IE conquests is what makes it stand out especially.

The Corded Ware culture is the common ancestor to Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, and Indo-Iranian languages. That makes it a candidate for the most important culture in world history, as far as "what did they accomplish", any reasonable perspective would likewise attribute the accomplishments of these cultures, in some degree, to the genetic and cultural contribution of their common IE ancestor.

Corded Ware was itself only 60% Yamnayan and most of the remaining European farmer, the synthesis is an indispensable part of the story of the European. But Khan's "imagine what the European farmers would have achieved if they wuzn't interrupted" is what I am challenging here.

But Khan's "imagine what the European farmers would have achieved if they wuzn't interrupted" is what I am challenging here.

He never says anything like that. You are tilting at windmills here. Razib thinks the Indo-Europeans were cool, he also thinks they were barbarians par excellence. Both are objectively true.

Yes, ancient history was full of violence (just like modern history), but we (we non psychopaths) admire other ancient achievements.

There is difference between someone who, when thinking about Roman empire, thinks "The Romans built roads, bridges and aqueducts that lasted for millenia, they created unparallelled law, literature, art and architecture, they were so cool!" and someone who thinks "The Romans razed and burned cities so thoroughly that no trace remained, they perfected the art of torture, they decorated their roads with lines of crosses, they fed people to the beasts for fun, they were so cool!"

The sheer scale of the IE conquests is what makes it stand out especially.

Spread of black plague was even wider and faster. Do you too find Yersinia pestis "inspiring"?

There is difference between someone who, when thinking about Roman empire, thinks "The Romans built roads, bridges and aqueducts that lasted for millenia, they created unparallelled law, literature, art and architecture, they were so cool!" and someone who thinks "The Romans razed and burned cities so thoroughly that no trace remained, they perfected the art of torture, they decorated their roads with lines of crosses, they fed people to the beasts for fun, they were so cool!"

Nah. The looting and plundering phase of warfare is seldom romanticized, but warfare in general is not. Gladiator arenas are also one of the first things that come up when you ask people about cool things Romans did, and if you ever went to a museum of torture, it's hard not to be impressed by the sheer creativity of some of these inventions.

Spread of black plague was even wider and faster. Do you too find Yersinia pestis "inspiring"?

I would, if I was a bacterium!

Come the fuck on, your first post was consensus building already, no need to take it a step further and paint like, 90% of the guys I grew up with - including myself - as God damned serial killers just because we think conquest is cooler than road building.

God damned serial killers just because we think conquest is cooler than road building.

Well, conquest is parallel killing, not serial killing, so naturally there's less current resistance to it.

More seriously: although it's unfair to say that conquest is no more pro-social than serial killing, because conquest at least implies you have a social circle that includes enough people to form a cohesive army rather than one that might just include yourself ... they at least share the nature of "can be both morally and selfishly opposed by anyone outside that social circle", no? Alexander "the Great" is instead "gujastak", "accursed", in Zoroastrian literature; he was "the evil-minded (badgumān) tyrant who killed our ancestors one by one" to the first Sasanid. The more successful you are as a conqueror, the lower the ratio is of people who benefitted to people who were conquered.

On the other hand, it'd be easier to dismiss conquest as completely useless if history had a better track record of nations being able to combine and unify when necessary without it. Wiki's list of proposed state mergers is pretty short (even considering it doesn't have anything before 1300AD? really??), and if you then omit the failed mergers, the failed-shortly-afterward mergers, the barely-a-treaty "mergers", and the pseudo-voluntary mergers backed by threats of violence, it gets even shorter.

Well, conquest is parallel killing, not serial killing, so naturally there's less current resistance to it.

Damn it man, can't you see I'm trying to be cranky?

More seriously, the utility and sociality of war don't even enter the equation for me, I stop short after thinking about popular culture, which considers a lack of conflict a complete non-starter in terms of entertainment value. Our brains are wired to think conquest - competing and winning and celebrating your power - is cool regardless of its utility in our current climate. Boys and men in particular are drawn to it and no amount of peer pressure is going to change that. Eetan obviously wants to stigmatise indo-european studies, and I assume it's because he doesn't want the cw thread to fill up with Aryan supremacy shit - which I sympathise with - but all of the prehistoric civilisations were fascinating as hell and I have to push back against his attempts to stigmatise learning about them. And to then go the step further and claim only psychopaths enjoy battles is just preposterous.

You don't have to be a psychopath to think genocide is cool. Psychopathy is the state of having no empathy for people in your ingroup. Lack of empathy for people in the outgroup is far more common and can't really be considered an abnormality.

"The Romans razed and burned cities so thoroughly that no trace remained, they perfected the art of torture, they decorated their roads with lines of crosses, they fed people to the beasts for fun, they were so cool!"

And yet the destruction of Carthage is well known even today, an entire religion was founded based on crucifixion, the "lines of crosses" scene is popular in modern entertainment (including Game of Thrones), as are gladiatorial battles against people and of course lions. It seems a lot of people think that stuff is cool. The popularity of Conan's paraphrase of Genghis Khan ("to crush one's enemies...") demonstrates this as well.

They may not have had much in the way of settled civilization, being nomadic and far away from any enduring population centers, but for that very reason the idea that their only advantages were in... stupidity and an appetite for bloodshed, you're suggesting? should strike you as immediately implausible. Archaeological and linguistic evidence show that they and their close kin were the inventors of the wheel (or at least the first to find a use for it, in the form of wagons which enabled them to colonize previously uninhabited regions of the deep steppe, and chariots which were only later imitated by the big kids on the block) and the first to domesticate the horse -- at first for food, but later turning it into a practical means of transportation by inventing the bridle. They were the richest and most technologically advanced pastoralists the world had seen, while enjoying a higher standard of health and personal freedom than any contemporaneous agricultural civilization. The extant evidence probably underrates their cultural achievements, in that, as pointed out elsewhere in the thread, they were able to force their language and many of their customs even on those host cultures that they were not able to overwhelm numerically/reproductively.

Later inhabitants of the steppe -- the Cimmerians, Scythians, Goths, Huns, Mongols, etc. -- also made a name for themselves by terrorizing the settled peoples of Europe and Asia. The low population density and lack of geographic barriers to movement removed the ordinary mechanisms by which tribal hierarchies are solidified into inward-looking governments, while the people adjacent to the steppe always made for tempting targets. The Indo-Europeans just did it first and best.

In contrast, the Sardinians provide insight into the pre-Bronze Age farmer populations, as:

Sardinia appears to harbor the highest amounts of Neolithic farmer ancestry and very little of the pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherer or Bronze Age pastoralists ancestries.

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

Not bad achievements for small island, sparsely populated and desperately poor for all of recorded history. Continent of such people had no need to be "liberated" and "uplifted" by invasion of Ted Bundys and Jeffrey Dahmers.

Which accomplishment on that list do you find the most significant?

Most significant accomplishment of Sardinians?

Rule of law and limited constitutional government, much better system than, for example, "one failed artist can do whatever he wants, including declaring war on the whole world".

All of this without even one drop of very special Aryan blood. Remember, by Aryan theory these people should be capable only of grunting and rooting for grubs.

and today the Aryan people most closely resemble genetically Northern European peoples.

population groups with greater Indo-European ancestry trend as nations with higher technological innovation, economic status, empire-building, and global colonization, all of which follow the modus operandi of the Indo-Europeans

The Greeks and Spanish seem to have a very low amount of Indo-European ancestry according to your graph despite being some of the great civilisations of Europe, am I misreading you somewhere?

A lot of Spain’s initial leadership during its golden age was actually Dutch/Belgian by ancestry and the Spanish upper classes at least claimed to be of mostly visigothic descent in contrast to the peasants. I don’t think that’s the explanatory factor, I just think we should note that if we’re discussing HBD in relation to the Spanish empire we should note the nobility were more Germanic than average and the military was dominated by Dutchmen.

The Aryan Invasion Theory is to Indians what HBD is to Western liberal-leftists. No matter how much data and evidence is served up, many simply refuse to accept the facts, period. Incidentally, I've found Hindu nationalists to be the most strident in their opposition, which goes to show that science denial isn't a left-wing problem alone.

It's mildly amusing to me that the genetic evidence simply piles up ever greater in the West whereas the debate in India becomes ever more disconnected from reality the more the Hindu nationalists start to dominate discourse. Khan's own attempts at watering it down could perhaps be because a significant fraction of his audience and social circle are Indians. It's simply a touchy topic and perhaps he is trying to triangulate. I agree with you that his interpretation is iffy at best.

Why are Hindus so touchy about this? Brita, for example, do not care much that they are a result of a number of wholesale population replacements.

A lot of Asiatic nationalism revolves around this sort of idealized, semi-mythological conception of a pure race undefiled by foreigners or untermenschen. A lot of Western nationalism too, but less so in Anglo countries. Hindus are a lot like Turks in this regard; the most virulent Turkish nationalists reject the obviously mixed nature of Turkish genetics and instead insist that they are a pure Turkic race, straight from the mountains of central Asia, the sons of Asena, etc etc.

Makes sense, but new genetic evidence makes it rather hard to sustain. Eg from what I remember, the Turks (or maybe just the non-peasant ones) are something like half Greek by ancestry, due to many centuries of Greek settlements.

Westerners are indeed not so much into purity, but that might be just a result of decades of extremely relentless anti-Nazi indoctrination.

You don't need genetic evidence. Have you seen a Turk from Turkey? They look nothing like a Kazakh or even an Uzbek.

It's not like the Turks' love for assimilation or the fact they didn't kill everyone in the territories they now control is something not in the historical record.

If I were to hazard a guess: India's history is (mostly) just being invaded by foreigners. There were a few exceptions (e.g. the Chola Empire), but by and large this was the general pattern. The AIT is the "ürinvasion" so to speak, and if it gets accepted as fact then it sort of acts as a template for the rest of India's history. If you actually spend some amount of time in Hindu nationalist spaces online, they are all pushing the "out of India" theory. It's pure cope, of course.

But so is England, though maybe in not so recent memory, so it might have lost the emotional impact.

Ah, but England has the legacy of Empire, theirs was arguably the greatest and most influential in the history of the world. Despite all the contemporary controversy, it's certainly impressive and most opinion polls show that the English are largely proud of it.

As for the invasion by the Danes and later the Normasns...they were a closely related people, unlike the Central Asians and later the Europeans for India. On top of that, there was never much of an independent Indian empire, except perhaps the Mughals but of course they were of the 'wrong' religion. So it is understandable that isn't something Hindutva types would like to advertise.

What is a "Hindu Nationalist" for someone on the Motte?
For the largely American/European population it is most likely an angry Twitter user of Indian origin they saw replying to Razib or an English speaking journalist reporting on India on twitter.

Indians do not really have any civilizational memory of Aryans like they have of Turks or the British and will react with skepticism. If we did not have genetic studies it would never have even become a topic of discussion. There are no physical imprints of that time.

Why are they so dead set against the idea of an Aryan invasion?
As I have mentioned in the past, India has innumerable ethnic fissures and this whole discussion of "Aryans" in India is often pushed by politicians trying to reap votes on the back of community tensions. Any discussion of Affirmative action that tilts away from "We need more affirmative action" is pushed back with "We have been oppressed for 3000 years. You think 70 years of Affirmative action is enough to fix this?". While there is some truth to this for some Indian communities, this is often pushed by influential land owning groups who want to claim oppression.

We currently have over 50% quotas for disadvantaged groups in most Indian Government institutions. Tamil Nadu, where this topic is the hottest has 67% quotas. There is no end date or benchmark given for when this will end given how useful this is for Indian politicians.

Most Indians on twitter have not really studied the scientific literature behind this issue and will pattern match any Western commentators wading into this issue to the above.

My opinions on this issue? (Notice that I call this opinion, I don't consider it relevant beyond Intellectual masturbation)
Even Razib acknowledges that the impact of the Aryans was far greater on culturally rather than genetically. And to be honest, the cultural footprint is also largely syncretic with prehistoric animistic traditions.

Except some populations in North-West India most Indians regardless of caste are largely "Not Aryan". South Indian Brahmins may have predominantly North Indian paternal ancestry, but North Indians are not "Aryan" either. Sure, some upper caste folks may have higher Steppe contributions but even then they are still largely "Not Aryan". We also have upper caste groups that do not have high Steppe ancestry.

https://twitter.com/ArainGang/status/1705319485178314918

If you compare this to ancestry studies of populations in South America you will find a lot of people are significantly European by ancestry and even more significantly European on the paternal side along with near complete Native-American ancestry on the maternal side. You will not find this even in Indian upper castes.

Now, sure you can say that most of the Steppe ancestry was passed down by men and bands of roving men in those times can hardly be pacifistic peace loving eccentrics. And perhaps, the only reason India is not fully "Aryan" is because there weren't enough Aryans to replace the pre-Aryan population, but given the ways things have played out I do not see any justification for any steep racial divide.

What is a "Hindu Nationalist" for someone on the Motte?

I can't speak for others, but for me it is someone who cares deeply about Hindus and (often, but not always) views India primarily as a Hindu civilisation. Other dharmic faiths are welcomed but the Abrahmic ones are generally seen as a spiritual threat at the least. I think this is the baseline criteria for someone who I'd consider a Hindu nationalist. I've talked to many of them, most of whom who tell me they are Hindu nationalists, and generally speaking a significant proportion go much further than this, e.g. some incorporate jati identity and often view things like the SC/ST act as no different than moslem appeasement etc.

While there is some truth to this for some Indian communities, this is often pushed by influential land owning groups who want to claim oppression.

Yeah, I'm aware that reservation policy has degenerated into a racket a long time ago, e.g. many OBCs are now knee-deep into those waters. I'm generally speaking against affirmative action, but I don't think a good argument is to say "well, because AIT is pushed by rent-seekers, that means we have invent a new history". I can understand this from a pragmatic political perspective, but the facts remain the facts. The evidence for AIT is overwhelming and crushing. Moreover, it is only getting stronger by the year. The debate in India has completely severed itself from the academic discussion and becomes increasingly unmoored by the day.

As others have suggested, your chart doesn’t really suggest that there’s as much correlation between Yamnaya ancestry and quality of civilization as you suggest - the Scottish are quite a bit more Indo-European than the French, the Ukrainians vastly more Indo-European than the Greeks… The Scots were disproportionately represented in the British imperial workforce, true, but Scotland is still poorer and has shorter life expectancy than most of England. For the entire period between 1971 and 2010, all 10 of the 10 “most deprived” local authorities in the UK were in Glasgow alone. What great achievements did the Indo-Europeans have before they invaded Europe? And what makes them German as opposed to Baltic, Ukrainian, or Czech?

I'm not suggesting every single group with greater Yamnayan ancestry has greater achievement than those with less. I am suggesting there is a relationship in the split between Northern and Southern Europe, broadly speaking, that is partially explained by differences in genetics. Key features of Northern European civilization, like the industrial revolution emerging in the North Sea area and colonial ambitions, are also reminiscent of the I.E expansions. Attributing those accomplishments solely to neolithic European farmers is unlikely and self-serving, given those accomplishments and behaviors seem most concentrated where I.E left the greatest genetic legacy.

I think geography and climate probably explain a lot as well.

As far as geography, things like trading, contact with other cultures, wars, etc. probably play a rather large role in creating the culture of society. Take a bunch of really generically good, smart people and stick them on an island … and you’ll have feudal Japan. Stick the same type of smart people on islands surrounded by trading partners, and have them fight wars with each other and with other people … you get Ancient Greece.

Climate likewise would likely drive cultural development. If you live in Northern Europe or China, you live in a place where food must not only be grown, but preserved. You live in a place where you have to build sturdy and warm shelters, produce warm clothing, etc. this quite obviously selects very strongly for a culture that plans ahead. If the reverse is true and you live in a tropical paradise, there’s absolutely no reason a culture would ever develop even farming, let alone food preservation, advanced construction, or high cooperation. Everything is simply available for th3 plucking, and other than shelter against rain, you don’t need protection from the elements.

The obvious test is ‘is there a contrast between Americans of Italian descent and those of Irish descent’- these are both largely unselected diaspora populations living in the same area of the country, and clash on the genetic frequency you’ve identified. I don’t think you’re going to find huge outcome divisions.

I don't understand why it's important whether Indo-European invaders were more predisposed to creating civilization than local populations at the time they invaded. The admixed population has evolved since then. Isn't the current state what matters? Similarly, it could totally be the case that the local populations were better in some way. But they're gone now. The comparison isn't against an extinct population, it's against the other populations here now. Not that population-level comparisons even make sense when you can compare individuals.

It's not particularly clear to me what the relevance of any of this is, or why we should care?

The Kurgan hypothesis is pretty well confirmed, as I understand it, so the idea that Proto-Indo-European people spread outwards from the steppe and used violence in the process is hardly new, nor the idea that it's possible to, at least in part, trace descent from them across a wide area. But this is a very niche area of history, of interest to only a small group of specialists.

Moreover, as has been noted below, there doesn't seem to be any particular correlation between degree of PIE descent and what we might call civilisational complexity. Degree of PIE descent doesn't seem to mean anything significant or practical today - it is, at best, a mild curiosity.

I don't deny that history is interesting in its own right. However, it sounds like you're interested in present-day political implications? So to ask you directly - what do you think the significance of this is? So far you've pointed to, well, a bunch of creepy fringe figures on Twitter, but of course what they believe isn't exactly significant.

The glorification of the Indo-Europeans on the right wing also marks a shift from a liberal/conservative "white people didn't do nothing" opposition to progressive racial narratives, to a Nietzschean glorification of a Bronze Age spirit.

I think you are extremely mistaken if you think that 'the right wing' in a broad sense has any idea about Proto-Indo-Europeans, or that it gives a damn one way or another. You link a short clip on Twitter that is totally inexplicable to anyone who isn't already deeply invested in a tiny subculture of conspiracy-minded anti-semites.

I know BAP had a moment, but if you think that there's a wider 'BAP school', so to speak, that's going to become a major, even mainstream influence on the right... well, I think you will be surprised.

SecureSignals is a neo-Nazi. He has been ordered by the mods to diversify his posting from anti-Jew rhetoric. So he's posting things he finds out about - which, by nature, tend to be things of interest to a neo-Nazi - that are not related to Jews. It should be fairly obvious why the ethnogenesis of white people is of interest to a neo-Nazi.

And I, for one, actually found this significantly more interesting than the rest of @SecureSignals' posts, so I'm not particularly feeling like criticising him for it even if the circumstances aren't ideal.

He's doing a killer job of things, too. This was an actually decent effortpost that had nothing to do with the J-word but was still Nazi-adjacent enough to make sure everyone knew what he was doing.

Combine this level of dedication with his ability to not just break down and call people horse fuckers, and they're going to have to REALLY bend over backwards to get rid of him.

Mods should probably specify what proportion of X to not-X posts are allowed.

I feel like in the post Gun Germs and Steel world, that any civilizational thesis of this scale that doesn’t grapple with the enormous consequences of climate, access to resources and diseases is intrinsically weak.

I feel like in the post Gun Germs and Steel world

In the world of an almost universally mocked book that has been shown to be a laughingstock over and over?

universally mocked book

What the hell are you talking about? It literally won the Pulitzer Prize…

By being a pop science book that appealed to center-left sensibilities. For the past two decades almost all of his major claims have been shown to be either untrue, or simply unsupported. The GGS central hypothesis is almost certainly incorrect.

The blog post this is based on draws heavily from David Anthony's The Horse, The Wheel and Language. Horses and wheels, were; if anything, just as important to European colonization of the Americas as guns or steel. The Indo-Europeans also brought metal working to places like Britain that hadn't seen them before.

Did anyone of you had Waffen SS fighter getting standing ovation in Canadian parliament for their 2023 bingo card?

Congratulations - you will be rich.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66908958

Canada's House Speaker apologises for praising Ukrainian who fought for Nazis

Yaroslav Hunka, 98, was sitting in the gallery and got a standing ovation in parliament after Mr Rota said he was a "hero" during a visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. During World War Two, Mr Hunka served in the 14th Waffen-SS Grenadier Division, also known as the Galicia Division - a voluntary unit made up mostly of ethnic Ukrainians under Nazi command. Division members are accused of killing Polish and Jewish civilians, although the unit has not been found guilty of any war crimes by a tribunal.

Now I doubt that the svastika will be on the Canadian flag anytime soon. But the fact that the ideology blinded the people to make even a basic background check on the so called hero is troubling. And there seems to be some kind of full blown damage control operation going on.

Anyway a lot of Canadian politicians will have to figure out how to unsuck this dick. ADL seems to be silent as of now. Media try to bury the waffen ss part in the bottom of the articles, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the more fanatical ex blue checkmarks try to write opinion piece explaining how this unit were somewhat different than the rest of the Waffen SS.

I just love it. It's such a funny thing, especially the part where the speaker said the "thank you for your service" incantation. I didn't think we would surpass (multiple, separate occasions) photos of our "woke dream" PM doing blackface in terms of pure lol factor, but this has to be close. The politician who got caught on a home camera peeing in a coffee mug is maybe a close 3rd. Canada politics man.

I was crying laughing. It had to be Trudeau.

Imagine all the staff people who didn't realize "fought against Stalin in WW II" probably meant was a Nazi (Finns excluded, of course).

Well, for a time ‘fought with Stalin’ also meant you were probably a Nazi.

I’d bet 95% of them don’t even pay attention during every session. And they just follow along with the clapping figuring the people in charge are NOT getting them to clap for a Nazi soldier.

More surprising that Zelensky didn’t stop it since the Ukranians most of the time have decent meme game.

He looks positively gleeful during the ovation -- probably didn't occur to him that it could be a problem.

I realized a bit into this war that Russian Nationalist and Putin himself use the word Nazi in ways that we do not in the west. Often it seems like they used it to just refer to the west - the people who call themselves Neoliberal today are Nazis to the Russian Nationalists. Perhaps more simply western society itself gaining influence in the area Russia views as there backyard.

(Finns excluded, of course).

You appear to be forgetting at least Poland, probably also other.

But wasn't the fight between Poland and the Soviet Union over within about 2 weeks?

Two weeks' time, but there were nearly half a million Poles fighting, and since the German invasion of Poland was a couple weeks earlier I'd bet approximately 0% of the anti-Soviet fighters were Nazis or Nazi-sympathetic.

"fought against Stalin in WW II" probably meant was a Nazi (Finns excluded, of course).

was still wrong

also, there was further partisan activity, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursed_soldiers

Interesting. I had never heard of them.

So what actually happened? They just didn't do a background check? Historical illiteracy? Aide who hates his job let him through for a giggle?

For added hilarity, it was on Yom Kippur.

Trudeau has said that Canada has committed genocide. Perhaps they're just owning it.

Let’s not forget when then-Congressman Adam Kinzinger praised the totally 100% real heroism of the fighter ace the “Ghost of Kiev”. Or when NATO shrugged its collective shoulders when Ukraine fired a missile at Poland, blamed it on Russia and then lied about it even after contradicting evidence came to light.

Nobody in the West is acting seriously about this war anymore. The battle lines are frozen. Russia isn’t giving up territory it has annexed. Ukraine will be just another failed state, just another sacrifice made on the altar of neoliberal democracy.

I’m not sure they were ever taking Ukraine seriously. The minute the Russians crossed the border, it was treated like a kids’ story. Ukraine good, NATO good. Russia bad. Ukraine will win, Russia is pathetic and weak. Made up stories of heroism. And of course boycotting and deplatforming and renaming anything Russian. Cancel the Russian opera singer, if you can’t ban Russian athletes, make them compete under a different flag, and of course shame anyone who doesn’t use the proper names (Kyiv, Ukraine (no the), Chicken Kyiv, The Russian Invasion of Ukraine) or companies that don’t leave Russia within the first ten minutes. Anyone who questions the narrative is either a Russian Troll or fooled by one.

Now a lot of the above, worryingly, sounds a lot like what was going on in WW1. We at least in America, saw the war as a chance for glory, we cheerfully shit on the Germans and renamed Sauerkraut to Liberty Cabbage. And eventually we found out just how bad war can be.

I would like to chalk this up to the foolish youth of American nations who haven't yet tired of the millennias of ruin warfare can bring.

But the truth is probably more grim. I recently watched They shall not grow old which is ostensibly about the British youths in WW1, and they too had a cheerful glee about them to start with, despite being part of a culture that has seen its fair share of horror at that point (if not of the industrial kind).

Maybe people are just eternally naïve about such things. There are seemingly endless examples of bloody conflicts that everyone was strongly convinced would be over by Christmas. The power of delusion is strong, and maybe it has to be to muster the will to defend oneself in the first place.

It's about exposure to reality and control of narrative. These proxy wars will continue to happen, even "real" "wars" will continue to happen. New soldiers are born every day, and they will be continuously fed into the meat grinder, until the mass of the populace gets exposed to the harsh reality of war, it will never end. This war needs to happen on US ground, everyone must feel the pain viscerally, personally for it to be real. When people die somewhere else, it's an abstract thing. It doesn't really register to the common person. If it does it will be swept away by some other personal problem or the news cycle will shift and some other bullshit will fill their attention.

Have you read this article? https://www.ecosophia.net/notes-on-stormtrooper-syndrome/

I think you'd find it interesting given some of the points you've made above.

Or when NATO shrugged its collective shoulders when Ukraine fired a missile at Poland, blamed it on Russia and then lied about it even after contradicting evidence came to light.

Well, the important part is that if it was Ukrainian missile, then it was a collateral damage of anti-air missile.

The battle lines are frozen. Russia isn’t giving up territory it has annexed.

That does not appear to match reality, as far as I know.

The memory of the Commonwealth, the Soviets and Americans fighting on the same side has long faded. Plus the Cold War happened. It's no longer part of the public consciousness.

Isn’t this basically “Ukraine good, Russia bad.” No need to think through the details.

It’s denialism about the role of nazism in Ukrainian nationalism. Like it or not Ukrainian nationalism involves lionizing figures who supported the nazis and often as not lionizing actual neo nazis themselves, and I mean actually literally nazis not just politically incorrect. A general policy of denial had the side effect of bringing in an actual literal SS trooper. This man is viewed as a hero by lots of Ukrainians for the same reason lots of southerners view Lee and stonewall Jackson as heros. But pro-Ukraine western posturing denies that and then gets caught with its pants down. Simple as.

I think at least we can say, Nazism doesn't mean what it means to us to people who lived in Eastern Europe.

One of the more surreal things I've experienced lately was when I asked on the Motte Telegram back around the start of the war (which has a couple of actual Ukranian residents), basically, so what's the deal with Jewish Zelensky having an apparently-actual-Nazi unit (Azov battalion) serving in his army? Taking Western views at least sort of seriously, surely an actual Nazi unit would refuse to take orders from a Jewish President, and a Jewish President would surely boot an actual Nazi unit out of the army he was Commander-In-Chief of. But all the Ukrainian residents were like, yeah, so what, why do you think this is weird? Even for English-speakers who presumably have at least some exposure to the Anglosphere, the idea that Nazis and Jews might not like each other much just seemed incomprehensible to them.

In the abstract there's room for nuance in this discussion, but in the context of the year of our lord 2023, it will never not be funny that an actual member of the Waffen-SS got a standing ovation from the very people who claim "honk honk" is code for "heil Hitler".

The way I understand it, the Azov aren't that Nazi and Zelensky is really not that Jewish. And even Hitler had a Jew or two he liked.

They are about as Nazi as the IRA were terrorists.

This seems to be fair to me for the people between Russia and Germany. They didn’t have a choice to pick the good side. I would have chosen Franco or Pinochet when those countries had their communists moment. Eastern front you had no good choice. And Russia isn’t just communists - they have a military based authoritarian form that did brutal oppress their neighbors for centuries. It’s not Cuban Marxism which is poverty but hasn’t been very deadly (they’ve allowed mass emigration any time it gets hot which was an immigrant group the US was fine with).

A lot of wars don’t have the obviously good side to be on. And that applies to modern wars.

My hot take is that he deserves a standing ovation for fighting for his nation.

> be born in 1920s Polish Galicia

> be Ukrainian-speaking peasant

> be oppressed by ethnic-majority poles

> West side of country gets invaded by Germany

> your side of country gets invaded by Soviet Russia

> have to deal with literal fucking Stalin for two years

> get invaded by Germany

> liberation.jpg

> ”Hey kid, wanna fight the Russians and Poles that have been oppressing you your whole life?”

> 80 years later

> “fuck you. You picked the wrong side”

Yeah, people are acting like he drove a truck to Toronto, or something.

Many such cases

How were they oppressed by Poles? Not disagreeing, I'm just not very familiar with this area of history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Ukrainian_War

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

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

Thanks!

I only heard of the Polish-Ukrainian War two weeks ago, from this video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=DVZARacjKGI

The axe being ground in that video is a little complicated. Poland has a law making it a criminal offense to talk about "Polish concentration camps". I thought that I understood where the Poles were coming from. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact kicked off WWII with the Germans and the USSR dividing Poland between them. The Germans set up some concentration camps in the part of Poland that they occupied. Calling these "Polish concentration camps" blames the Poles for what the Germans got up to.

But the Polish law also bans talking about the Polish concentration camps that the Poles set up in the aftermath of the Polish-Ukrainian war. The law against blaming the Poles for what the Germans got up to, turns out to be a sneaky law against blaming the Poles for what the Poles got up to.

That leaves me rather against any law limiting freedom of speech; you never know what kind of sneaky cover up is being attempted.

So I've been reading and listening to a lot of WWII memoirs, specifically of Germans on the eastern front. I want to find out for myself the motivations of these men, dispel the myths and western propaganda of WWII, and find any parallels to our modern times. Many of these memoirs are written by soldiers of a Waffen-SS division. What I have picked up from reading these memoirs, is that the reasons these men joined the Waffen-SS are diverse and not as dubious as our western propaganda and the myth of the just war would have you believe. The Waffen-SS were elite units composed of volunteers, whereas I imagine the Wermacht were comprised of mostly conscripts.

Based on the accounts I have read, many of the men joined the Waffen-SS out of pure hatred for the communists and concerned the growth of communism would swallow European culture and religion. The time they spent in the Ukraine often talked of the local populace's hatred of the communists and the atrocities that were committed against them by the bolsheviks. The more fanatical SS that one usually thinks of were termed the Allgemeine SS and were often thought of poorly by the soldiers of the Waffen-SS.

So, it is no surprise that many Ukranians such as Mr. Hunka volunteered to serve in a Waffen-SS division as a matter of revenge against the bolshevik hordes. This hardly makes him a nazi as is the common narrative and its hilarious to see this backfire on Canada. Many if not most of these brave heroes died and its sad to see them slandered after the fact, when they were right to fear, and fight against communism.

Relevant Books

The Eastern Front: Memoirs of a Waffen-SS Volunteer

Für Volk and Führer: The Memoir of a Veteran of the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler One of my favorites and actually has a really good audiobook on Audible, which as you can imagine is hit or miss on these memoirs.

The Forgotten Soldier This one is unique as the author was a young poor french kid who joined the army under Vichy France because of little opportunity when he came of age, then found himself a part of the Großdeutschland division. Also had a real good audiobook on audible.

Interesting how all those brave heroes went to fight against "communism" and "bolshevik hordes", yet ended up mostly fighting Soviet people.

You could turn this same argument around on every western ally justifying their fight against Nazi's. Don't forget the soviet forces had political commissars in their units.

"Justifying" their fight against Nazis? The nazis attacked the allies and countless neutral countries first, that's all the justification needed to fight.

I'm not going to get dragged into a justification debate on WW2. You will clearly stick to the usual normie narrative so it's not worth the reddit style back and forth.

Retreating because you can't back it up. The "normies" are far more correct than the neo-nazis on this topic. The Gleiwitz incident was a false flag attack ordered by Hitler; the nazis attacked first and did so after years of other powers making nonaggression pacts, trade deals, territorial concessions, lifting Versailles treaty enforcement, and other negotiations in an attempt to avert another war. All of that amounted to a big waste of time, because the nazis were just acting in bad faith stalling to arm up and backstab everybody.

A bunch of my family died fighting in the Wehrmacht, then even more when Hitler in his incredible arrogance and egomania refused to allow civilians to evacuate as the front lines crept closer and closer. The region they were from doesn't even exist any more. Know who the survivors blame? Not the Allies, not even the Red Army, they place it squarely on Hitler and Nazism for starting the war then refusing to surrender when it was clearly lost.

I don't really understand why you feel the need to argue something I didn't even bring up. I'm not a "neo-nazi", merely trying to understand the time and motivations of the men that fought there, especially the eastern front.

My point, which I should have spent more time on, was that communists committed atrocities in these areas before the nazi's showed up. So it stands to reason that some men in the Waffen-SS, volunteered for retribution or to fight against a fear of spread throughout Europe. Which IMO is a valid reason.

To answer:

"Justifying" their fight against Nazis? The nazis attacked the allies and countless neutral countries first, that's all the justification needed to fight.

Yes justifying, as in the common narrative of the western soldier going off to fight the Nazi's but ended up just fighting normal German people. This was in response to sun's comment.

I don't appreciate your emotional appeal in your argument, and nowhere did I defend Hitler, his strategies, or motivations. I'm not a Nazi, however I also don't think the narrative that is so common in regards to WW2 is 100% correct. In order to find out the truth I read first hand accounts and other history in order to form my own opinion. I'm also not an expert on the subject and freely admit that. Sorry to trigger you I guess.

Take them all with a dump truck of salt given the incentives. "I wasn't a real fascist, I was just an over eager patriot who donned the swastika to fight muh godless commie bolshevik asiatic hordes" is on the bingo card next to -

  • "I was just following orders"

  • "actually I never hated Jews"

  • "we lost because of numbers alone, not superior enemy tactics and strategy"

  • "those war crimes were carried out by this other officer who is now conveniently dead"

-and so on for conveniently self-serving narratives commonly encountered among accounts by nazis and quislings living in NATO countries seeking to ward off prison, hanging, repatriation or pariah status by whitewashing their past and selling themselves as useful assets for NATO. Historians are lately more critically approaching such works rather than taking them mostly at face value as before, which is really improving military history around the eastern front.

I caught the daughter's Facebook page before she deleted. She and her father were so incredibly proud and excited about this, and her father was over the moon at the chance to meet Zelensky. (there is a lot of boring stupidity around "but Zelensky's jewish!", but I think this is sufficient disproof of at least "currently a joins-the-SS-to-cleanse-Ukraine-of-jews-level nazi")

I think it's worth giving a hearing to his own account of his experience with the war (auto-translated). This obviously could be heavily sanitized in retrospect, but with the historical literacy to understand the circumstances of growing up in a village in eastern interwar-Poland through 1939, I don't think it necessarily has to be. This whole situation is just profoundly sad.

I imagine the daughter gave the staffers of Speaker Rota, who is also their personal MP in North Bay, the little lie-by-omission of "First Ukrainian Divsion" as part of trying to arrange for her father to be able to come see Zelensky speak (I didn't see any indication that the expectation was for him to be presented before parliament), and it snowballed all the way through all the staffers necessary for this to have happened without a second thought. It's fun to imagine those staffers, and the circumstances that lead the Liberal Party and Parliament to have nobody in the entire chain equipped to realize that "fought against the Russians in WWII" needs a second look. What an unbelievable unforced error.

I think there may be some meaningful distinction to be made between Eastern European and Baltic people who had first been conquered by the Soviets and who subsequently lived under NKVD terror and had friends and family disappeared forever in the middle of the night, and who were later under the direct physical threat of the Soviets' return, for whom these Waffen-SS units were the only organized option available for them to fight that with; and German SS who had other options and for whom joining the SS was something very particular. Indeed a Canadian government commission found something like this in the 1980s (pretty explicitly laid out in part 2), specifically regarding this division.

Of course there's no conceivable way you would expect the general public to have enough historical literacy to process this with any more finely-grained nuance than how they are. Boy did they ever fuck up.

Other things:

The SS Galician's specific accusation of atrocities was against not-specifically-jewish Poles. File this too under "there's no conceivable way you could expect, historical literacy, etc". (also I can't find any mention of this atrocity in the commission report ...)

The Daughter's facebook was absolutely plastered, multiple posts per day interspersed with their giddy anticipation of this event going back as far as I looked, with "Good People Don't Spend Their Time Harassing Marginalized Communities" (Progress Pride Flag), "No Space For Hate" (Intersex-Inclusive Progress Pride Flag-coloured map of Canada), Orange Shirt Day profile pics, etc. What an impossible nightmare this attempt to do a nice thing for her incredibly elderly father must have turned out to be.

The racism that ought to be focused upon when it comes to these old fighters being praised is obviously Anti-Russian racism. That is the stronger continuity. I don't think it is an accident that Ukrainian nazis are being promoted. Rather the point is to allow a continuity of ultranationalism against Russians, including of warcriminal type.

But of course not to allow dissent from the other agendas that said grandaughter was all too happy to promote. So nationalism including of the more extreme sort but only so far leads to Ukrainians dying to kill Russians. And including putting no pressure on groups and a mentality that has proven willingness to commit attrocities towards civilians as well.

Which is immoral of course. Especially if you examine things from a more long term outlook, not just last two years and consider whether the meat grinder had to happen. Those who supported it happening because they don't mind Ukrainians dying and Russians dying for they value the weakening of Russia as more important, could very well be more bloodthirsty characters than this 90 year old in his youth.

Certainly I find the obsession with 80 years old WW2 insane when it is far greater moral affront to be arming people willing to commit attrocities than giving awards to someone who might have commited them in the past. We have people who have bloodied their hands with warcrimes enough in our timeline to not concern us too much with those who did so 80 years ago. It is current warmongering imperialists who we should be more concerned with.

Another thing to consider is maybe her grandfather was not the most evil to ever evil, but in addition to any atrocities he might have participated or not participated in, even more importantly today like in his youth he is betting on the wrong horse. He is betting on a foreign power establishment which sees his own nation's and its people and sovereignity as a threat and has no intention to let them be.

There is a repetition of the same mistake of joining with the devil you don't know how oppressive it is to oppose the devil you have a more direct experience of screwing you over. I believe this is a factor in the establishment supporting these "nazis". Already proven to be useful idiots for a foreign western power and are following the same playbook.

The better path for Ukraine to have followed would had been to try to resist being captured by either sphere of influence and to play the threat of each against each other. If that had happened, the future would be much brighter for the Ukrainian nation. It would be better for the world as well. The real shitshow, this incredible unnecessary loss of life would not have happened.

I caught the daughter's Facebook page before she deleted. She and her father were so incredibly proud and excited about this, and her father was over the moon at the chance to meet Zelensky. (there is a lot of boring stupidity around "but Zelensky's jewish!", but I think this is sufficient disproof of at least "currently a joins-the-SS-to-cleanse-Ukraine-of-jews-level nazi")

Jews supporting something does not sanctify evil since plenty of Jews has supported all sorts of evil in modernity especially as well. There are the obvious far left movements but even certain movements less associated with the left.

I have even seen the arguement that Italian fascists were not racist because they were rather friendly with Italian Jews who were well integrated and overepresented per their population in Italian fascism which is actually a hidden fact. One should not take the wrong conclusion from this however. The Italian fascists changed their attitude due to the influence of nazi Germany but even then they were much more protective of Italian Jews than various other nazi allies.

At the same time that the Italian fascists (including Jewish Italian fascists) were friendly to Jewish Italians (or less hostile later on) they were genocidal imperialists demonizing and justifying brutal murderous conquest against other ethnic groups including european ones. Even well within WW2, Italian fascists obviously treated Jewish Italians far better than Greeks, Slavs and other groups they conquered.

Jews or some Jews being at the center of something does not mean that something is good. That prejudice is racist stupid nonsense and it is promoted by people who want to excuse evil by using it.

Someone with nazi symbols who isn't an antisemite but willing to commit attrocities against other groups should be condemned for what they are. Jews should not lie at the center of our moral universe, although their welfare should be considered too along other groups but never as a prioritization at expense of others.

The better path for Ukraine to have followed would had been to try to resist being captured by either sphere of influence and to play the threat of each against each other.

Sounds nice, pre-2014. Once one of your neighbors invades you, this isn't an option anymore. I know you know this. Help me understand what I'm missing.

You are missing the fact that it is immoral not to blame people who make crisis inevitable and it is short sighted to look at things only after things have escalated. So no, we need to blame those who made 2014 reality, both in Ukraine, Russia and in the USA.

After 2014, escalating to the current level has proven a worse option. Not shelling civilian areas for the Ukrainians. Or the USA not having their hands in this proxy war while their apologists lying their asses off. Or the Russians not supporting the rebels.

After the more hardcore invasion of 2022 there isn't really a good endpoint after the invasion. Ending the gruelling meat grinder sooner is better for an Ukrainian and Russian point of view. Unless you want Ukrainians to die so they can kill Russians for a long war, a peace agreement is not going to make people happy but is better than the alternative.

Of course if the Ukrainians could have won easier, it would be a better alternative for them not to go to the negotiating table. But that isn't the case.

The Ukrainians aren't the only ones needed for a peace agreement, but the better end point would have been a ceasefire peace. And crimea should had been the one area the Ukrainians should had been willing to make more direct concessions.

Actually it appeared that Ukraine and Russia were close to make an agreement but Britain torpedoed the agreement.

American imperialists both in terms of the USA itself and in terms of random indivudals who are American imperialists are not the only big power, and the only group of chauvinists willing to screw over others but they are not a good force for the world and they are very willing to destroy whole countries to expand their sphere of influence or harm rival powers like Russia while promoting propaganda about freedom and other nonsense. Meanwhile they try to put their own preffered people in charge who will go along with it. Maybe even advocate with greater zealotry for the American empire to remain engaged.

So I don't have a grand solution of the biggest powers bringing international justice because they are not lead by moral people with moral goals. I can still condemn the ruinous paths being followed. And pressure immoral actors who are hypocrites into behaving better, and condemning them for failing to live up to their propaganda. Obviously this forum has an over-abudance of American imperialists who cheerlead destruction and act with unparalled arrogance, having learned nothing from the Iraq, Libya, Syria debacles but even doubling down in acting as if they are moderates for doing so. A fraud.

Ideally we have a multi polar world where great powers use the concept of international justice to dissuade each other from warmongering would work better.

And while the world never had that, it could have it to a greater or lesser extend. The worst trajectory possible is American imperialists dreaming of world conquest and consolidating an authoritarian alliance that oppresses their vasals and is very hostile towards Russia/China and others while BRIC alliance also consolidates, and things heat up for a WW3.

For what is worth, I believe we need more gatekeeping against authoritarian american imperialists who deplatform and shame dissent while promoting both war outside and authoritarianism at home.

The escalatory potential of Ukraine/Russian war and how it helped lead Europe away from Russia and threatens to do so with China, is another facet to it.

"No Space For Hate" (Intersex-Inclusive Progress Pride Flag-coloured map of Canada), Orange Shirt Day profile pics, etc. What an impossible nightmare this attempt to do a nice thing for her incredibly elderly father must have turned out to be.

Pardon? I'm supposed to feel sympathy for someone willingly participating in slanderous attack against parents concerned with the gender affirmation scandal?

the little lie-by-omission of "First Ukrainian Division"

I'm glad someone pointed this out. That he was introduced to the parliament as the veteran of the "First Ukrainian Division" was a calculated and blatant lie. The 14th Waffen-SS division was named Galizien specifically to avoid any official mention of "Ukraine", as the Nazis did not view it as a legitimate nation, and certainly not as a polity worthy of sovereignty. Then in the last stage of the war when defeat was imminent, the Ukrainian collaborators in Germany started to self-organize as control over them collapsed, and one of their actions was apparently renaming the 14th, which was at that point stationed on Austrian soil, to the "First Ukrainian Division". The Waffen-SS headquarters never sanctioned this, so the change was never official, and thus does not appear in official documents.

Another calculated lie that at least some members of the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada committed was erecting monuments to their military veterans which carry the insignia of the 14th on them, but are nominally dedicated to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which is a completely different organization and was not founded by the Germans.

expect the general public to have enough historical literacy to process this with any more finely-grained nuance

This is a cheque the current regime [and the fragment of the public that supports them] is inherently unable to cash. If you want to pretend the evil Nazi menace is everywhere, fine, but that approach has inherent costs, one of which is that you now have to be unimpeachable about not bringing things literally called "Nazis" in.

The public is not going to care (their faction has in large part seen to that) that "he's one of the good ones", even though that's obviously true, and so that faction has no other option but to cancel a military ally from a country they're trying to help because to do otherwise is just writing your own attack ads. Caesar's wife must be above suspicion.

Personally, I'm rooting for the father; a Communist foreign empire trying to unjustly impose its will on territory that empire considered a western province is not entirely irrelevant to recent Canadian history. Sadly, I don't think there's a Canadian political party willing/representing a public that would be receptive enough to actually pointing that out, but it would be absolutely hilarious if there was.

The public is not going to care (their faction has in large part seen to that) that "he's one of the good ones", even though that's obviously true

How is it "obviously true"?

Also, Eastern European SS sympathizers just looked to act out ethnic revenge fantasies on civilian populations. This is what Hunka's group did, mostly focusing on killing Polish civilians. Same thing in Croatia and doubtless other places too, where it was an excuse for killing local Serbs and Jews and stealing their property. What about that makes them "the good ones"?

I'm surprised that people are surprised. The West will back anyone from a radical jihadist or in this case praising a former (?) Nazi if it suits its geopolitical interest. Ultimately, the rhetoric of "human rights" is reserved for the large domestic audience of midwits even as the de facto foreign policy is far more ruthless.

Yeah, this is where I am on most things. It’s not even just foreign policy, but most things to do with government— the official version is not really believed by anyone educated above 5th grade civics. The powerful rule for their own sake, not the public’s.

the official version is not really believed by anyone educated above 5th grade civics

Unfortunately, this is not my experience. Some of the most conformist people I've met have had higher education degrees. I think Chomsky wrote something about this some years ago, how the primary function of universities is to increase compliance with the system. Interesting thought.

Did Chomsky write this specifically about universities? Looking at the summary of Manufacturing Consent (written as an MIT professor, co-authored with a U. Penn. professor), you can see all sorts of complaints about profit, advertising, anti-communism ... "government and corporate news sources" is probably the closest category to "universities" but it sure doesn't sound like they had their employers specifically in mind.

I've seen complaints about this before. Let's see ... Moldbug had:

If anyone is in an obvious position to manufacture consent, it is (as Walter Lippmann openly proposed) first the journalists themselves, and next the universities which they regard as authoritative. Yet, strangely, the leftist has no interest whatsoever in this security hole. This can only be because it is already plugged with his worm. The complaint of the Chomskian, in other words, always occurs when the other team is impudent enough to try to manufacture a bit of its own consent.

I may never be a huge Chomsky fan, but I haven't read the primary sources and I wouldn't trust Moldbug as a charitable paraphraser; I'd definitely like to know if I fell for a misrepresentation.

Self-selection for compliance/conformity to managerial authority.

I'm sure that the Canadian government would have preferred a veteran of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) to present in front of the parliament instead. It's true that the UPA, among other atrocities, committed ethnic cleansing of Poles in the Volyn region of Ukraine, but what is more important is that it was an organization of Ukrainian origin, not German, which fought both the Germans and the Soviets, and obviously has much better potential PR as a result compared to any SS unit, obviously. (Potential Polish complaints notwithstanding.)

The issue, I guess, is that while thousands of Ukrainian SS men managed to immigrate to the West after the war, as they surrendered to the British in present-day Austria, the UPA was largely wiped out by Soviet internal troops after the war, and I'd be surprised if even a dozen of them managed to flee to the West. And certainly not one of them survive to this day.

Edit: I was replaying to other comment in the thread from DaseindustriesLtd . You can find it under there.

ADL seems to be silent as of now.

The mother organization, however, has played it absolutely straight. The Times of Israel:

B’nai Brith Canada’s CEO, Michael Mostyn, said it was outrageous that Parliament honored a former member of a Nazi unit, saying Ukrainian “ultra-nationalist ideologues” who volunteered for the Galicia Division “dreamed of an ethnically homogenous Ukrainian state and endorsed the idea of ethnic cleansing.”

“We understand an apology is forthcoming. We expect a meaningful apology. Parliament owes an apology to all Canadians for this outrage, and a detailed explanation as to how this could possibly have taken place at the center of Canadian democracy,” Mostyn said before Rota issued his statement.

Gotta say, it's heartening to see that some things don't change. B’nai Brith doing some NAFO "oh shush, what Nazis, Zelensky is literally Jewish so all's well, and who really knows, maybe SS volunteers really had a point, after all, you see, those Russians…" routine would be a total clown world event. I don't much like those guys but can appreciate anyone sticking to their bit.

The thing about Ukrainian patriots is they're quite straightforward. They had a bog standard Eastern European/Balkan ethnonationalist movement with all the classical knuckledragger tropes about $ingroup being Aryans/Greeks/Amazons/Huns/werewolves (the account belongs to some grifter but I've ran the list by Ukrainian acquaintances and they say it is "common knowledge" or school program to a greater or lesser extent) and $outgroup being racially inferior nonhuman pig dog creatures (rural prejudices, a haughty Moscal urbanite would certainly say); they still have it; many naively buy it as literally true (eg their famous auteur with a "cult following among Kyiv intellectuals" theorizing on Moskals' descent from some separate, evil species of ape… ah, the video is private now) and often do not expect reproach; their imagemakers will dress it up as merely «standing up to Moskal Asiatic Imperialists», and obvious geopolitics as well as the nature of the conflict force polite people to keep awkwardly smiling and pretending that's some cute exotic custom or whatever. It really is refreshingly attractive, the way Remove Kebab memes were, I imagine it speaks to the suppressed music in the blood of those whose ancestors went on Crusades; and they have better music than Serbs. Better lyrics too.

Canadian foreign politics has become a lot more riveting lately. Trudeau giving a MCU era impression of a Churchill speech was not in my bingo card either.

From Podervianskyi's Wikipedia article:

Podervianskyi's works have often been criticized because of his use of vulgar unprintable language. They are written mostly in Surzhyk and include much swearing and obscenities, which make them appear as if they were composed by an uneducated person. Often it seems that the only reason one would read the works is for their comic impact and to hear creative swearing. But this is not the case. The numerous citations from Shakespeare, Nietzsche, Taoism and dzen buddhism philosophers give the idea of several intellectual layers in his works. Although a number of Podervianskyi's expressions have entered Ukrainian slang, he uses crude language to show the flaws and grotesqueness of his characters. Podervianskyi carefully matches up language with his characters. Thus a self-made intellectual spouts scientific-sounding nonsense, while more "straightforward" characters use simple words to express complex things.

"To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Les Podervianskyi. The humour is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical physics..."

“We understand an apology is forthcoming. We expect a meaningful apology. Parliament owes an apology to all Canadians for this outrage, and a detailed explanation as to how this could possibly have taken place at the center of Canadian democracy,” Mostyn said before Rota issued his statement.

If I am holding official position and someone evens thinks of daring of holding this tone to me I will throw everything in the state possession to ruin him. Every piece of dirt the intelligence agencies have for him, his relatives and anything he holds dear.

This is not antisemitism btw - just anti obnoxious cuntism. This level of entitlement just has no place in a civilized world, no matter if it is this, PETA, or PMRC

B’nai Brith are not PETA but, in our crude gentile terms, something between a Masonic organization and an ethnic mafia. If you were holding an official position and "threw anything in the state position" to ruin them, you'd have had bad luck on the road, or were revealed as a violent pedophile, or something to this effect (but these days probably just your Antisemitic utterances from 20 years ago suddenly surfacing). I believe this is generally understood by people who matter; though, seeing as they fail to anticipate the side a Ukrainian who fought Russians in the WWII stood on, it may be an issue those historically illiterate people still need to be reminded of. Thus the uncouth tone is necessary to deter future transgressions.

I'm not going to begrudge anyone the schadenfreude of watching the other tribe beclowning themselves, and this is absolutely fucking hilarious for anyone with a functioning sense of humour even if they are basically pro-Ukraine and pro-Trudeau, but I don't think this means very much.

Legislatures get a lot of requests from members to do small favours for a constituent (see this Atlantic article about the plethora of bills to rename Post Offices for the US version) and generally operate an assumption of good faith as long as the request doesn't come across as partisan. The most famous example is the Texas Legislature being pranked into honouring a serial killer. The US Congress begrudgingly allocates a certain amount of staffer time to vetting post office renamings to make sure they don't honour anyone unsuitable, but the actual legislators wave requests through as long as the home-state delegation are onside. Other legislatures have less staff support than Congress, so they can't even do that level of vetting.

This is a case where you shouldn't have needed to do the vetting - anyone with a clue should know that "Ukrainian patriot fighting Soviets in WW2" implies "Nazi collaborator", but the only person I would expect to do even the bare minimum is Speaker Rota as the constituency MP honouring a constituent. So I think he deserves to go. But I don't think the Canadian Parliament as an institution is more blameworthy than the Texas Legislature was in 1971.

I'm not going to begrudge anyone the schadenfreude of watching the other tribe beclowning themselves, and this is absolutely fucking hilarious for anyone with a functioning sense of humour even if they are basically pro-Ukraine and pro-Trudeau, but I don't think this means very much.

Like with the blackface it matters only because we all know the Liberals would be calling for nuking the CPC from space if they even approached anything like this.

And it wouldn't be seen as an honest mistake but a reflection of real issues within the party (it clearly is a reflection of credulity on the part of Liberals since, as you say, this shouldn't have even passed the sniff test but good luck getting that standard applied equally)

But it's the Liberals so they'll get a pass , like the time they did both a misinformation and a stoking stochastic terrorism while pushing for ever greater censorship and control to fight such things.

like the time they did both a misinformation and a stoking stochastic terrorism while pushing for ever greater censorship and control to fight such things.

It's always fucking DARVO with these people. Whatever it is they are complaining about the other side doing its exactly what they are doing. Like that whole "fake news" and "disinformation" shit they where whining about at the same time as they were coordinating literal conspiracy theories worse than the wet dream of a schizophrenic. (Russia-gate/pee-tape)

I was amused by this follow-up article that refuses to call the guy a Nazi, or even a former Nazi. Many paragraphs deep they print that he was in the Waffen SS, but even then hedges by saying the unit was "under Nazi command" instead of itself Nazi, and they throw in a pseudo-exonerating line about his unit not being found guilty of war crimes.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66919862

Trudeau calls praise for Nazi-linked veteran 'deeply embarrassing'

An invitation to parliament for a Ukrainian man who fought for a Nazi unit in World War Two is "deeply embarrassing" to Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says.

Yaroslav Hunka, 98, got a standing ovation after House of Commons Speaker Anthony Rota called him a "hero" during a Friday visit by Ukraine's president.

Mr Rota has said he did not know of Mr Hunka's Nazi ties and made a mistake in inviting him to attend the event.

...

During World War Two, Mr Hunka served in the 14th Waffen-SS Grenadier Division, a voluntary unit made up mostly of ethnic Ukrainians under Nazi command. Division members are accused of killing Polish and Jewish civilians, although the unit has not been found guilty of any war crimes by a tribunal.

The unit was renamed the First Ukrainian Division before surrendering to the Western Allies in 1945.

There are several things which are just astonishing to me. First, even if he didn't know he was a Nazi, shouldn't it have been enough of a problem that he fought against the Russians during WWII? He had to have known that the Russians were on our side.

But even more disappointing is that our Parliament, the most powerful institution in the country, is putting people forward as worthy of high praise without doing the most basic investigation into the person they're giving such an honour to.

Then you have the fact that he got a standing ovation from the other members of parliament, which indicates none clued in to the significance of his having fought against the Russians during WWII, and they were all eager to applaud him even though they should have recognized they didn't have a clue who he was.

This should prove once and for all the incompetence of Parliament as a deliberative body.

shouldn't it have been enough of a problem that he fought against the Russians during WWII?

A lot of people fought against Russians in that time period, and Canada has a large Ukrainian population with unfond memories of the Russia of that era.

This seems to be just a regular mildly charitable interpretation to me?

Per Merriam-Webster, Hunka would be a Nazi if he was either a

1.Member of the Nazi party

2.Supported Nazi ideology.

He wasn't a party member, and superficial search doesn't give any indication of him being an ideological Nazi.

There's a small matter of him fighting under Nazi command but given the historical context, it's entirely plausible, indeed probable, that him volunteering had nothing to do with a sympathy toward Nazis, but rather hatred of communists

and superficial search doesn't give any indication of him being an ideological Nazi

What standard of evidence are you looking for? When someone volunteers to join the SS, which requires swearing an oath to Hitler and probably a bunch of other stuff, hosts Himmler, carries out a genocide against Poles to Himmler's approval, etc., I believe it's fair to say that they are a Nazi. I am not saying that he personally carried out a genocide, of course: just that he willingly joined and armed group whose primary accomplishments and motivation was killing Polish civilians, when he had every option not to.

I mean any standard of evidence that excludes literal SS members from being Nazis is ridiculous.

Perhaps an analogy might help: I have ancestors who fought in the Red Army, but I would never stoop to branding them communists just because they decided to take part in fighting off Nazi invasion

Update - it seems this story has some legs:

The Canadian Speaker of the House of Commons Anthony Rota (no relation) has now resigned over this incident.

Meanwhile, Poland has reportedly "taken steps" towards extraditing Yaroslav Hunka for "crimes against Polish people of Jewish origin". That story doesn't seem to have the update of Mr. Rota's resignation.

It seems like a dumb but honest mistake. Maybe they will learn to be more tolerant of much more understandable incidents like this one.

People's Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier posed for a photo with members of an organization described as a hate group in Calgary Sunday.

Normally, when such things happen, the subject of the scandal is accused of being secretly far-right, but few people have that reaction to the Liberal Party when it does something much worse.

The reporting there is fascinating. I appreciate how long it takes for them to actually name the hand gesture in question. Uncharitably, because they know their readers would take it less seriously if they used the phrase "OK sign".

This is nothing compared to other Ukrainian public relation efforts.

First there was picking American transgender woman as official spokesperson for Ukrainian army, who then went on unhinged rant threatening to kill "Russian propagandists" all over the world.

(speaking in English, not Russian, so it is clear that it were not Russians in Russia who were target of this threat)

This speech is there, it is something you will hear from mouth of cartoon Evil Mastermind(TM) in corny B movie, just before Action Hero(TM) storms in and drops the villain into his/her/their/zir/xir own shark tank.

Someone in charge then noticed this does not make Ukraine look exactly like Avengers team and decided to suspend Cirillo.

So sanity prevailed and all will be good (optics) from now?

Well, Zelensky just decided to make honorary "ambassador of Ukraine", of all people, Marina Abramovic, world famous performance artist.

It sounds like 4chan fake news prank, but it is real, reported by mainstream media(and then vanishing from their pages).

Ukraine knows well what it is doing, Ukraine tries hard to signal it is on the right side and win hearts and minds.

Hearts and minds of people who matter, not yours.

edit: links

Think you mean this as a reply, rather than a top level thread.

First, his main target, John Podesta, isn't even the guy that owns any of the artwork he portrays as sick and demented. That would be Tony, his brother. Second, the two pieces of artwork that were pictured in Tony's house are quite milquetoast. I'd say something like the Garden of Earthly Delights is far more disturbing than anything Podesta has in his home, but I doubt MartyrMade would find that painting objectionable.

I think the thing that gets me about Pizzagate is that (like the Tim Ballard / Sound of Freedom stuff) it completely misunderstands who the victims of the 'real life' versions of these things are. They're pretty much never middle-class white American or Western European kids. This is the 'Taken' fantasy. When rich and powerful people commit this kind of sexual abuse, they go abroad to do it, the victims are powerless people from third-world countries born into impoverished families in remote communities usually already connected in some way to organized crime. Nobody super rich is risking jail by abusing white american kids in the basement of a DC restaurant, just like no child trafficker is risking a mega police operation, arrest and a long, long, long time in jail by kidnapping Liam Neeson's rich white American daughter off the streets of Paris. Even Epstein switched very quickly from preying on Manhattan private school girls to largely pursuing penniless (often illegal) Hispanic migrants in the dirt poor West Palm Beach suburbs.

But sex trafficking of poor Guatemalans or Cambodians is a lot less interesting to the conservative audience than blonde whites having it happen to them, so storytellers are forced to improvise.

Does the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, to the extent that it even exists as an unironic and coherent one, claim that the primary/exclusive victims of the pedo cult are "middle-class white American or Western European kids"?

Considering the Clinton Foundation activities in Haiti are somewhat central, no, I don't think it's every been limited to middle class white Americans (but I repeat myself).

I'm pretty familiar with Pizzagate and I don't think it was ever a widespread assertion that it was primarily Haitian kids getting abused in the Comet Pizza basement; the Clinton Haiti stuff was more an additional, related Qanon obsession.

Let's not mix up what is being claimed. I am not claiming that Haitian children were the primary victims. I am saying because the Haitian children are a common part of the story, it cannot be that American children are the primary victims.

I also think you're trying to differentiate between two things that are the same. The Pizza from pizzagate was Comet Ping Pong, yes, but it was also the tens of thousands of dollars of pizza and hot dogs that Obama had flown in from Chicago. It was the creepy coded messages in the Podesta emails. And it was the Clinton Foundation's in retrospect disturbing focus on children in Haiti.

They're pretty much never middle-class white American or Western European kids.

Jeffery Epstein was picking up local white girls in Florida. I don't think any of them would have qualified as middle class, but several of them lived with at least one gainfully employed parent. Virginia Guiffre (the girl in the famous Prince Andrew picture) was working at Mar-a-Lago when Ghislaine Maxwell recruited her, which makes her at least respectable working class.

OTOH, it does look like he was picking on girls who were screwed up in various ways. For example, Virgina Guiffre had already been sexually abused by two men (one in her mother's house, one while living as a runaway) before moving in with her father, and was trying to become a masseuse.

The Roman Catholic Man-Boy Love Association targetted some kids from normie families who were sufficiently functional to be regular churchgoers. (Although the majority of the victims were children in Church-run children's homes, it was buggering the altar boys which gave the scandal legs). In the UK, the sexual abuse extended to pupils at Ampleforth, which was the most expensive and socially prestigious private school in the north of England. The other smaller religious sex abuse scandals tend to follow the same pattern.

The Penn State sex abuse scandal and similar scandals in youth sports (which is as lousy with sex abusers as the RCMBLA) involved student-athletes as victims, who tend to be middle-class, or at least respectable working class.

So although the "Taken" fantasy is almost entirely a media creation, it definitely isn't the case that normie middle-class white American kids are safe from sex abuse. It's just that it tends to involve corrupt authority figures, not stereotypical predators.

WARNING FOR PARENTS - THIS IS IMPORTANT - YOUR KID IS NOT PROTECTED FROM SEXUAL ABUSE BY CORRUPT AUTHORITY FIGURES BY YOUR MONEY, POWER OR COMMUNITY STANDING UNLESS YOU ACTUALLY DO THE WORK OF PROTECTING THEM. This starts by giving them the tools to talk to you about dodgy shit, and making sure they feel safe doing so.

The vast majority of sexual abuse is, of course, committed within the family and community, so I certainly wouldn't suggest that 'middle class white kids' are 'immune' from it. But when it comes to the group-based sexual trafficking of children by strangers (ie. the Hollywood/Operation Underground angle) then yes, it's almost never the 'Taken' demographic. The same thing was true in Rotherham and the other UK grooming gang scandals; in those cases many of the victims were indeed white British, but they were from broken homes, most had been in the care/foster system, had drug issues, previous sexual abuse, were children of single mothers etc etc.

The other smaller religious sex abuse scandals tend to follow the same pattern.

Yes, the pattern being that in the church cases, the abused boys were most typically, as you say, from children's homes and/or from broken families in the community (and this is very evident too in eg. the Boston Catholic child abuse scandal as portrayed in Spotlight etc).

Jeffery Epstein was picking up local white girls in Florida.

Whether poor Hispanics from oft-broken families in West Palm Beach (who made up a substantial proportion of Epstein's younger victims) are or aren't huwhite is the kind of question I leave for dissident rightists on Twitter, but the main point is that, again, the 'narrative' of child sex trafficking as affecting nice middle class kids in nice areas lured off the street by a predator in a white van offering ice cream is wrong. And even in Epstein's case, it's alleged that many of his non-American victims were trafficked from Eastern Europe or were poor Eastern European models in New York whom he promised Victoria's Secret contracts via Wexner etc; the courts are just less able to pursue those cases in the US and the victims less likely to speak out.

It's also more broadly true that middle class people are much more likely to speak out than working class ones. So judging the distribution of risk from media accounts is extremely likely to present a skewed picture of the relative likelihood of victimization by class.

The vast majority of sexual abuse is, of course, committed within the family and community, so I certainly wouldn't suggest that 'middle class white kids' are 'immune' from it.

I would say kids raised by their married biological parents are pretty safe from family-based sex abuse, and in the current year being raised by married biological parents is strongly correlated with being middle-class.

But my impression is that sex abuse (of children and young adults) by corrupt authority figures is enough of a problem that saying the "vast majority" of sex abuse happens in the family and community is misleading. I have no idea whether the ratio of "family and friends abuse" to "corrupt authority figure abuse" is 1:3 or 3:1, and I don't think anyone else is keeping count either. As a parent, I would like to know.

Part of the problem talking about this in places other than the Motte is that the media narrative about this kind of thing tends to be heavily vibes-driven, so trying to draw this kind of distinction, or even to try and draw a distinction between abuse of pre-pubescent children vs abuse of young adults, gets your head bitten off by enraged mothers. And of course, if you reduce Pizzagate to vibes, there is zero doubt that Hilary Clinton really did help cover up sexual abuse of young adults by powerful politicians - her husband was impeached over it. If it turns out that the takeaway pizza Monica brought to Bill before blowing him came from Comet Ping Pong Pizza, a lot of people would say that this makes Pizzagate "true", even though none of the lurid accounts of sex abuse of pre-pubescent children being talked about by Qanon types actually happened.

Unless you are really willing to commit to modern Twitter age gap discourse, there is really a huge difference between 22-year-old Monica Lewinsky and prepubescent sex slave children.

I agree with you. The whole point I was trying to make was that in a vibes-based discourse trying to make the distinction between different types of sexual misconduct is likely to get you in trouble for minimising/excusing one end of the comparison, but it is actually important if you want to understand what is going on.

The Penn State sex abuse scandal

Was the Penn State sex abuse scandal real? I remember reading a very convincing takedown which suggested that it was not. But of course it's been memory holed.

Does anyone have a link?

Yes, it was very real. There are a certain segment of Penn State football fans who refuse to believe anything negative about the program, and while this is usually limited to making excuses for Joe Paterno, a few have gone off the deep end and claimed that the abuse never happened. There is some question as to what exactly Mike McQueary witnessed that led to the coverup that got higher-ups indicted, but without that there are still enough known victims that it's clear Sandusky was an abuser. The allegations that kicked off the grand jury investigation were recent and unrelated to those that were reported on the most.

I thought Sandusky was recruiting victims from Second Mile the charity he founded for at risk youth.

Having checked, you are right. From the UK I had always assumed that Penn State was another "coach sexually abuses athletes" scandal similar to the US gymnastics scandal or the (boys) youth soccer and (girls) swimming scandals going on in the UK at the time.

First, his main target, John Podesta, isn't even the guy that owns any of the artwork he portrays as sick and demented. That would be Tony, his brother.

Is that even a meaningful difference?

Yes, given that the naming of various high-powered Democrats as Pizzagate child abusers was based on John Podesta's e-mails, not Tony's.

"Tony Podesta is a paedo, so everyone in his e-mail address book has some 'splaining to do or else they go down for aiding and abetting" is a claim of guilt-by-association that doesn't stand up in court, but is a reasonable approach to take when deciding who is allowed access to your kids (or would be, if the evidence that Tony Podesta was a child molester was at least circumstantial rather than just vibes). "John Podesta's brother is a paedo, so everyone in his e-mail address book has some 'splaining to do or else they go down for aiding and abetting" is nonsense. I would have no idea if any of my main professional or social contacts had a brother who is a sex offender, because I don't vet my contacts' siblings, and apart from spouses probably never meet them.

I agree it isn't a meaningful difference to the question "Is Marina Abramovic a fit and proper person to be an honorary ambassador of Ukraine" because she was tight with both Podestas.

That's not what I meant. How is it relevant that he wasn't the one who technically purchased the paintings?

MartyrMade, who occasionally says interesting things but has gone off the deep end recently, wrote an unconvincing substack article about Pizzagate. First, his main target, John Podesta, isn't even the guy that owns any of the artwork he portrays as sick and demented. That would be Tony, his brother.

I don't really know what to make of him. He's extremely rhetorically gifted and whenever he writes about something I'm not familiar with he sounds super convincing. When he writes about things I do know about he makes bizarre errors like the ones you noted, like claiming Zbigniew Brzezinski was the Secretary of State, or dramatic, unsourced assertions, like that exporting to global markets is bad for farmers in the global south (if anything the opposite argument that it increased farming sector dependency is more common)

The only time I've seen him called out for playing fast and loose with his claims, he didn't respond in a way that built confidence in his research process. It was from an essay on the history of mythology that to a large extent revolved around the claim that the central religion of the early Bronze Age was a belief in a universal Mother Goddess. One of the commenters pointed out that the Great Goddess theory has decreased in popularity, and he responded that he flat out didn't read anything on mythology written after 1950, and was wary of most things written after 1850.

1850 onward would of course include the Great Goddess hypothesis he's writing about, and as far as I can tell we just found a bunch of ancient female figurines and filled in the rest of the narrative ourselves. I don't know much about ancient religions so I have to trust authors here when they don't provide sources, which he didn't. Authoritatively claiming the existence of continent spanning religious traditions while openly saying you didn't even do a google search to check if we've found evidence they're real is not the kind of stuff that builds that trust for me.

This is nothing compared to his twitter, where I've just seen him sharing the laziest of disinformation, like videos splicing together separate clips of Lindsay Graham speaking to make him say homicidal things about Russians, fully emblazoned with community notes warning of this.

Let's wait and see. A suspension is just a suspension.

Hearts and minds of people who matter, not yours.

No shit. They need cash and weapons now, not the support of internet contrarians who will always hate them because they had the audacity to be invaded by the Russians.

Actually Zelensky does need the support of the people funding his stupid war. It’s becoming a major issue in American politics, to the point where people are getting pretty annoyed with him.

Poland recently told him to pound sand, and compared him to a drowning person who is going to take anybody who tries to save him down with him.

Instead of playing war hero, complete with his idiotic green costume her wears all the time, and constantly referring to Russians as “invaders” like some sort of marvel movie speech, Zelensky should be negotiating a truce, or laying out reasonable pathways to ending the war, not making absurd claims like that he, who has been losing his war, is going to push Russia completely out of the LPR and DPR (areas occupied by Russians since long before Putin invaded), and somehow retake Crimea.

The whole thing is absurd. It’s a ridiculous, nationally suicidal vanity project by a former television actor, and an American president who seems to be looking for a surrogate to fulfill the fantasy version of his dead son.

Zelensky was always much more conciliatory to Russia than the vast majority of other post-2014 politicians, he seemed not to even believe an invasion was coming until it actually happened. Describing him as embarking on a

ridiculous, nationally suicidal vanity project by a former television actor

...is really weird, he was much less jingoistic or nationalist than Poroshenko. Ukrainian nationalists really didn't like Zelensky (and many still don't) out of perceived weakness versus Russia before 2022. He also has no real choice but to keep fighting, he'd be shot in the back if he pursued major concessions now.

an American president who seems to be looking for a surrogate to fulfill the fantasy version of his dead son

Do you think US support for Ukraine would be different if Donald Trump was still President?

constantly referring to Russians as “invaders” like some sort of marvel movie speech

Are you suggesting they're not invaders? "One who invades", and all that? Surely if an accurate description of actions makes them sound like Marvel villainy, the way to correct that is "don't take villainous actions", not "hope they won't be described accurately".

It’s a ridiculous, nationally suicidal vanity project

"Resist invasions by foreign armies" is almost definitional to being a nation. Don't do that and you're just prey.

by a former television actor

Do you really not understand that it's not inherently ridiculous for a former television actor to stand up to Russia? This is even more obviously reaching than your sartorial complaints.

I’m saying that constantly referring to them as “the invaders” instead of The Russians is performative.

Ukraine is prey now and their “resistance” to Russia’s invasion is going to lose them their nation, not keep it.

As soon as Americans have had enough of Zelensky’s adventure, it’s going to be over and he’s going to be left with a generation of lost men, every western investment bank salivating at helping The Ukrainians rebuild, and a bunch of destroyed cities.

I’m saying that constantly referring to them as “the invaders” instead of The Russians is performative.

No; it's precise. Most Russians, even considered by nationality, have not invaded Ukraine, and something like a third will admit to pollers that they don't even support the invasion. There's little reason, when concerned with the armies who have invaded Ukraine, to use a less precise term for them. When considering Russians by ethnicity the distinction becomes even more important: many have been among the victims of the invasion. It might be an understandable accident to lump them together with their killers when speaking imprecisely, but why would anyone ever want to do so on purpose?

their “resistance” to Russia’s invasion is going to lose them their nation, not keep it.

That's not how game theory works.

Do you think that, if they'd allowed their capital city to be taken by the columns of invading tanks, that would have allowed them to keep their nation? Don't you think that's quite gullible? Putin made no such promises, and it's not even safe to trust agreements he does make.

Zelensky’s adventure

This word choice is performative nonsense. Nobody thinks that shooting back at the people sending bombs and missiles and tanks and soldiers to try and conquer you is an "adventure".

It's weird that you assign so much agency to the Ukrainians here, and yet I haven't seen you assign any to the invaders. Since your concern for the Ukranian men isn't feigned, surely you agree that the choice to invade was an atrocity, right? Even the most ardent honest pacifists will agree that starting a war is more evil than fighting back instead of surrendering.

generation of lost men

Ukraine has had those before. If we assume for your sake that the low death estimates there are correct and the high death estimates of the current war are correct, the war has to get about 30 times more deadly before the death toll of opposing Russia exceeds the death toll of being controlled by Russia.

I get it. Putin is the bad guy. Russia is the bad guy.

But in the real world: Zelensky has no path to realistically expelling Russia from the land they want, short of dragging the rest of the world into WW3.

If you really want to game it out: Zelensky has every reason to try and escalate this conflict. His best option is to drag my children into a war so that he can take some land back from Russia. The problem is: I’m not willing to send my children to their death so that Zelensky can have a little bit more land in the northeast of Ukraine. I’m also not willing to risk an all out nuclear conflict so that Zelensky can have more land in northeastern Ukraine.

Lock Zelensky and Putin (the bad guy Russia is bad Russia invaded Ukraine Russia bad) in a room together and demand that they hammer out a peace deal. That IS going to result in Russia keeping some of the land they’ve taken. In exchange Ukraine gets to keep a couple of hundred thousand young men alive.

As far as what is a nation: The United States is a nation too. It is not in our vital national security interests to escalate a regional conflict to the point where we are sending our children to their death. If Zelensky wants to continue his national suicide then go for it, but I’m not funding it anymore, and if he succeeds in escalating it to WW3, no promises he doesn’t end up on the other side when the US has gamed out her interests.

It’s not about a little bit of land in the northeast of Ukraine. It’s the entire country. They would cease to be a people. It would be a choice between mass emigration and living under an Iron curtain.

It’s like the supposedly realist don’t know anything about how Russia has treated them historically.

It’s not about a little bit of land in the northeast of Ukraine. It’s the entire country.

I thought they wanted half, and that they periodically send messages through unofficial channels that they'd be ok with NATO rolling into the other half?

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But in the real world: Zelensky has no path to realistically expelling Russia from the land they want, short of dragging the rest of the world into WW3.

Making it a financial drain is all you need. Russia only has so many tanks, planes, etc. in storage that can be re-activated. While there are efforts to step up defense production, it's not easy and Russia is a thoroughly corrupt nation whose government hemorrhages money into the pockets of whoever holds it at every step.

Zelensky, meanwhile, gets the financial, material, and ideological support not only of many different powerful nations to keep the war going, but their populations as well.

As far as what is a nation: The United States is a nation too. It is not in our vital national security interests to escalate a regional conflict to the point where we are sending our children to their death.

It is 100% in the US' interests to ensure the world order isn't realigned to favor Russian tactics. Every country planning on doing something similar is going to realize that going to war against the combined power of the Western order must be done with far more care.

If you only care as that your own nation isn't invaded, so be it, but much of the prosperity America enjoys stems from America's export of security to the numerous smaller players. Take that away and you've got a poorer America. Those players each contribute to that defense in their own ways as well, even if they don't spend enough directly on their own militaries.

Making it a financial drain is all you need. Russia only has so many tanks, planes, etc. in storage that can be re-activated. While there are efforts to step up defense production, it's not easy and Russia is a thoroughly corrupt nation whose government hemorrhages money into the pockets of whoever holds it at every step.

Yes but as few tanks and guns and ammo as Russia has, Ukraine has even fewer, it's why they are entirely depending on Zelensky flying around the world in his green outfit and begging/shaming other countries into funding his war.

Look it's horseshit that Putin invaded. That sucks for the Ukrainian people that are suffering, but Zelensky is only prolonging the suffering. This is not a marvel movie where the good guys win. The guys with more artillery, more land, more calories for their troops, more money, and more ability to threaten the rest of the world win. In this case, that is Putin.

Putin is going to win, the only question at this point is how long it's going to take, and how many young Ukrainian men are going to die.

The only way that doesn't happen is if Zelensky succeeds in starting WW3. I hope that nobody is deranged enough to think that is a reasonable sacrifice for the rest of the world so that he doesn't have to go to the negotiating table.

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Zelensky has ...

His best option...

so that he can ...

so that Zelensky can...

so that Zelensky can have more...

It's astonishing the level of dishonesty that goes into writing a paragraph like this.

It's not Zelensky doing this. If Zelensky negotiated a surrender to Russia right now, the Ukrainian people would toss his ass to the curb and probably kill him for it.

If by the "Ukrainian people" you mean the people in charge behind Biden and Zelensky. There's a surprising number of people in Biden's inner circle that seem to have ties to a certain region West of Russia.

Blinken told the story of his stepfather, who was the only Holocaust survivor of the 900 children of his school in Poland. Pisar found refuge in a U.S. tank after making a break into the forest during a Nazi death march. Nuland was born Shepsel Ber Nudelman in The Bronx, New York City, on December 8, 1930, to immigrant parents, Meyer Nudelman (a Moldovan Jewish garment repairman, 1889–1958)[5][6] and Vitsche Lutsky (a Belarusian Jew, 1893–1941).[5][7] Merrick Brian Garland [...] grandparents left the Pale of Settlement in the western Russian Empire in the early 20th century, fleeing antisemitic pogroms in what is now Ukraine and Poland, and seeking a better life for their children in the United States. ...

Realistically speaking, the men getting sent to the meat-grinder at gun point are not a threat to Zelensky. Only people close to him, you know, whoever flies him around to Canada and the US etc.

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Ah so he has no option to negotiate?

Have you signed yourself up for the Ukrainian foreign legion yet or no?

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Ukraine has had those before. If we assume for your sake that the low death estimates there are correct and the high death estimates of the current war are correct, the war has to get about 30 times more deadly before the death toll of opposing Russia exceeds the death toll of being controlled by Russia.

Obviously there is no good reason to suppose that being controlled by Russia will lead to a new Holomdor. And a peace settlement does not result in Ukraine being controlled by Russia.

Reagan was ridiculous and he totally failed in the long run. Granted the other options were likely worse.

How did Reagan fail? Reddit loves to act like he was the worse POTUS ever but he did contribute to USSR collapsing. His economic reforms caused growth to increase versus countries that failed to do the same.

He’s one of the great ones in my book.

Sometimes I just want to bash my head into the wall when people say Reagan was a failure. He was the first neoliberal/Milton Friedman back Potus. He was so incredibly successful Democrats became neoliberals and it’s now a slur against them. I had to quit being a neoliberal because my enemies stole the term. I’d argue they aren’t true neoliberals but ordoliberals would likely be more accurate but still.

I think he means that he didn't deliver on what he was elected to do. Bush Jr. was a meh president all things considered, but if you consider "no nation building" that he ran on, he was an unmitigated disaster.

Reagan failed to roll back any of the 'civil rights' era disasters in any significant way. At a minimum, he should have been able to end with a period all of Johnson's "Great Society" nonsense, and destroy the entire 'civil rights' apparatus that had been built. Instead we got modest tax cuts and huge military spending.

What civil rights era disasters and/or apparatus are you referring to here?

The whole of the civil rights era was a disaster that broadly lead us to where we are today. The apparatus I'm referring to are the Justice Departments various offices that investigate and prosecute civil rights crap, the NGOs that feed them, etc.

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The guy with the 1986 amnesty for 2.7m undocumented immigrants? Who as Governor signed the first No Fault Divorce law in the US? Traded the Hughes Amendment for the toothless FOPA? That guy is one of the greats?

Reagan was ridiculous and he totally failed in the long run.

When I was a child, Reagan calling out the Soviet Union was ridiculous "cowboy diplomacy", anti-Communism was the hateful thing we read about in "The Crucible", the Berlin Wall had been helping imprison East Germans for a generation and a half, half of Europe was behind the Iron Curtain, the world had 60K nuclear warheads ready to obliterate half of humanity 45 minutes after someone got angry enough (or 45 minutes after a simple mistake, depending), anti-missile systems were "reckless Star Wars schemes", and tankies were still trying to get away with "both sides" false equivalences.

When I was a young adult, there was no Soviet Union, declassification was revealing more historical Communist spies and atrocities than we'd imagined, there was no Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall was a street party, the superpowers were dismantling thousands of warheads a year and no longer had the rest on a hair trigger, tactical missile defense was saving lives and theater missile defense was starting to make intercepts, and (at least for the next couple decades) it seemed like we'd seen the last of tankies.

In the long run maybe we're all dead anyway, but that was an unexpected reprieve for a couple generations at least.

Reagan's anti-communism was his redeeming quality, to be clear.

Well, that was the one quality I was referring to. And it's hard to fault him for less successful attempts to improve the country ... although if I had to pick one ticking time bomb I'd say it's a bit damning that his terms in office were (due to Congress as much as him, to be fair) when US fiscal policy stopped being "borrowing has been an indispensable tool during major wars and the Great Depression, so it's important to stay prepared by getting ahead of our debt burden the rest of the time" and transitioned to the more modern "haha T-bill printer go brrrr".

his stupid war.

Just double-checking here, but you do know that Putin did, in fact, invade Ukraine, correct?

Can you make your clear? Are you suggesting that the person you are replying to might genuinely not be aware of that, or are you just engaging in petty language policing?

Are you suggesting that the person you are replying to might genuinely not be aware of that

I think it is likely that they know this fact, but pretend that reality is different.

Or rather, they understand that repeating words and formulations that give a one sided view of events is one of the classical principles of propaganda and you're pretending not to.

constantly referring to Russians as “invaders” like some sort of marvel movie speech

This is entirely accurate, as Russian army invaded Ukraine. If Russians dislike being in position of villains, maybe they should stop invading, murdering, looting and raping.

Or at least stop being surprised why noone wants Russian little green men visiting and why everyone in regions funds Ukrainian defense. (that is because funding it now is preferable to covering both human and financial costs of being invaded by Russia)

Zelensky should be negotiating a truce

Yeah, lets negotiate it in Budapest. Maybe call it Budapest Memorandum.

(in case above line is unclear: Russia has negative credibility and any promises of no invading they would make are useless. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum )

who has been losing his war, is going to push Russia completely out of the LPR and DPR (areas occupied by Russians since long before Putin invaded)

??? 2014 invasion was Putin's invasion. Also, right now Russia seems losing war if anyone is doing it

Zelensky is playing the American culture war. This isn't an indictment of Zelensky, who is in a desperate position. But it's an interesting glimpse into who really matters (and who doesn't). In Zelensky's belief, pandering to the most ridiculous beliefs of American leftists is a winning strategy. I think he's wrong about this, but it's revealing glimpse into the state of affairs.

Are you referring to the Ashton-Cirillo affair? I'm pretty sure Zelensky's not personally in charge of picking spokespersons for a minor branch of the Ukrainian army that essentially, if I've understood correctly, serves as the actual frontline army's farm team (or for getting rid of such spokespersons if they cause issues, either).

Zelensky

I suppose I am using the metonym. By Zelensky, I am referring to the war strategy for the country as a whole.

Are you suggesting that the transwoman was picked as the English spokesperson because she just happened to be the best person for the job? Clearly, there is a culture war angle at play here, and that whoever is calling the shots thinks that these cheap tricks will lead to more funding.

Similarly, Zelensky (actual Zelensky here) is not choosing to wear the ridiculous military fatigues because they are the most comfortable clothing available to him.

A show is being put on, and the audience is not the U.S. people as a whole, but only left wing of the Democratic Party. It's a strategy. I don't think it's the correct one personally. Zelensky should play it more straight. Ukraine is naturally sympathetic here and shouldn't alienate any of their natural allies.

A rather simple explanation for choosing Ashton-Cirillo as a spokesperson would be being one of the few native English-speaking volunteer fighters with media experience compounded with a distinct lack of military experience.

Sure, the military fatigues are a media strategy, but do you really think that the main audience for that one is "only left wing of the Democratic Party"?

but do you really think that the main audience for that one is "only left wing of the Democratic Party"?

Yes? This is literally Dylan Mulvaney of war propaganda, who else would take it seriously?

I meant the military fatigues, specifically.

Insofar as I’ve observed on social media, the online American factions really playing attention to Ashton-Cirillo are NAFO shibas, who would support anyone talking about killing Russians, and American conservatives who are casting out to find any evidence of Ukraine being ‘work’ for domestic culture war reasons and also probably because it makes them feel better about implicitly supporting the invading side.

I meant the military fatigues, specifically.

Oh... Well, if the comment you're responding to mentions several things, and you only mean to respond to one, it's a good idea to quote the relevant part.

Yeah, the fatigues are funny, but don't move me either way.

Why do you think it is wrong? On the one side, he may gain some support from people to whom the White House may listen. On the other side, he loses the support of people who has repeatedly declared they hate him and won't give him a dime anyway. Why do you think his strategy is wrong? Not from American, but from purely transactional side with the goal of getting the most help possible the fastest way possible?

I think he's losing mainstream Republicans who were firmly on Ukraine's side before.

I feel it's more the reverse - more Republicans are jumping on the bandwagon of "we are sending billions to Ukraine while (insert your actual point)" - which btw is a good example of "technically true as accounting goes but wildly misleading in substance" - mostly because it's easy and resonates with certain contingent. And that locks them into anti-Ukraine position, because you can't say that and then vote for sending more help to Ukraine - you'd be called a blowhard and a hypocrite (which most politicians are, but they hate that fact being highlighted). And given that, Zelensky doesn't have any incentive to take them into account anymore - if they are locked in into a position that doesn't help him anyway, they are lost cause, and there's no reason not to suck up to their enemies - with those at least there's a chance.

which btw is a good example of "technically true as accounting goes but wildly misleading in substance"

Misleading how? We now know for certain that billions are being spent to payroll Ukraine's entire civil service as well as provide direct subsidies to small businesses. It is definitively not all expired weapons writeoffs.

Again, these are very vague "billions are being spent". Which billions we are talking about? There are military aid packages. There are non-military aid packages. There are US money. There are World bank money. There are European money. If you want to audit that and point out certain spending you object to - fine, but you can't seriously discuss it in the format "our children are starving while Ukraine gets billions" - because children wouldn't benefit neither from stopping HIMARS shipments to Ukraine (children, even very hungry ones, can't eat a HIMARS rocket [citation needed]), not from stopping World Bank programs - because those programs, if not going to Ukraine, wouldn't be directed to the starving children you care so much about. If there's specific objection to specific spending - fine, it's completely OK to discuss it, but talking about all the financial help altogether as an amorphous blob of "billions" that can be freely converted and directed to any purpose is exactly what I call misleading. It doesn't work this way.

It is possible that part of the establishment does listen to the right. The movement shitting on vaccines and lockdowns was shut upon but eventually things moved a little bit more in line with their view.

By pissing plenty of people online, and acting unreasonably, Zelensky is influencing people who matter too.

Plus it matters to his country who he panders to. You aren't Ukrainian neither incidentally, and Ukraine is not a democracy.

Most importantly this kind of logic you are promoting of it doesn't matter what you do so long you pander to the far left leads to very dark path and it does imply that the people who you act as they don't matter have a license to act in a more brazzen way so they actually can matter. Just like you and the people you support like Zelensky, and the people who he aligns with have been acting quite aggressively.

People can be diplomatic with it, but we haven't yet degenerated to the point that no matter how unreasonable you are if you align with a certain faction, you won't lose support. Indeed, like most obsessions of parts of American establishment, whether covid, russiagate, or indeed foreign conflicts, eventually they will focus on a new current thing.

Can’t blame them for doing what they have to do in a desperate situation.

Of course, if Zelensky had been more pusillanimous / conciliatory to the Russians the same online dissident rightists would be decrying him as a disloyal Jew who sold out brave Ukrainian nationalists to Putin and the (((Oligarchs))) in exchange for shekels wired to his Israeli bank account, so ¯\(ツ)/¯

if Zelensky had been more pusillanimous / conciliatory to the Russians

Do you mean before or after the war broke out?

After, as before he was comparatively pro-Russian by the standards of post-Maidan Ukrainian politicians.

Considering that Zelenskyy won the 2019 election in a landslide on a peace platform, committing to peace talks with the Russian separatists in Donbas, I wouldn’t call ‘following up on his campaign promises’ to be selling out the large majority who elected him for that purpose.

As John Mearsheimer has noted, it was only once Zelenskyy departed from his peace posture, sabotaged by NATO minion Boris Johnson in April 2022, that he no longer represented the wishes of the Ukrainian electorate and only then betrayed them.

Somehow the Ukrainian electorate has no idea about it... That's no problem, there are enough Americans who can explain Ukrainians what they really want.

Wait, so is supporting the hardcore Ukrainian Azov/Banderite nationalists who want to fight to the end and never surrender the democratic or non-democratic decision now? It’s hard to keep track with the endless flip-flopping of ‘realist’, isolationist and general contrarian Twitter takes. Should Zelensky have been a citizen-of-nowhere globalist who sold out to the Russians and expat-ed to Israel at the earliest opportunity, or should he have stayed and allowed the hardcore nationalists to fight to the end (and tried to get them more weapons) as he has done?

There’s no real consistency to criticism of him. His detractors can’t seem to decide whether he’s too weak, too stubborn, too much of a NATO cuck or too powerful and humiliating western governments who are trying to rein in his maximalism. Usually it’s whatever’s convenient for their argument. To me, he seems to be committed to doing what the people of Ukraine want, which is to exercise their bloodlust and to fight, whatever happens and whatever is strategically ‘right’, to the last man.

There is no such thing as popular will. Nor is there any such thing as the people, of Ukraine or anywhere else.

Zelensky is a fairly standard if aesthetically eccentric eastern european politician who will do whatever it takes to stay alive and in power, in that order.

To that end, and like every politician, he has to reach an equilibrium between the interests of national and international powers and factions, which leads him, like every politician, to seemingly contradictory policy and criticism for said policy. You should expect contradiction, since it's inherent to the exercise of power.

If you want to get an analytical answer as to why Zelensky makes a decision and if that was effective for his goals, you need to look at those actions in the context of interacting with those surrounding established factions and powers. Not ask theological questions such as "what do the people of Ukraine want".

There is no such thing as popular will. Nor is there any such thing as the people, of Ukraine or anywhere else.

What utter Thatcherite nonsense.

Remember September 11? Did Americans go "Huh, something happened over there in New York? How about that, good thing it's got nothing to do with me"? Or did they go "OH YOU WANT A FIGHT BOY, LET'S GO"?

Was that before or after they were told how to think about it by the authorities and who the object of their ire should be, at times on completely false pretenses?

The media demanded a war neocons had wanted for a while and they got it. Had the elite of the time been radically against the intelligence community instead of for it they probably would have asked for the dismantling of the CIA and got it on also perfectly justifiable grounds.

"Americans" are perfectly unable to "want" anything because they are a category made up by a civil religion whose "will" is tied to the interests of institutions. They "want" what the NYT says they want and if they do not are ignored and marginalized.

Individual Americans may have wanted a whole lot, including a full investigation of those events, but they only got what they were told they wanted and what few they could organize to make happen. Because that is how power works.

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There is no such thing as popular will. Nor is there any such thing as the people, of Ukraine or anywhere else.

What do you call the 1991 independence vote in which 84% of people voted and 92% of those voters voted for independence?

A justification ritual.

Only someone who believes in the metaphysical claim that votes can reveal the will of the people feels bound by them. Since I understand the mechanics of democracy, I believe no such thing. People can be made to vote for anything.

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Do you think that Zelensky's attitude to Russia changed because a disgraced British politician sat on him, or because the Russian army invaded his country and committed the normal (i.e. large) number of atrocities that ill-disciplined armies commit when they invade a country.

There is evidence Russia was positioning for a large scale war and being isolated for years. They cleaned up their finances a lot since 2014. Still had 350 billion to be claimed out there but they had positioned their budget to be able to handle being cutoff.

The whole peace thing makes sense if Russia was willing to take a deal on Crimea plus breakaway republics but their actions indicate their peace condition was Ukraine not being in the EU and orienting their trade to Russia instead of the richer west.

There is evidence Russia was positioning for a large scale war and being isolated for years.

I don't understand why this makes them less likely to want a peaceful solution. If I wanted peace and felt threatened that's what I would do, were I big or small.

Once you've invested sufficiently in military build-up, you need to somehow translate that buildup into some sort of gain for yourself, or you've wasted a lot of money for nothing. Armies have inertia.

That's fair enough, although one would expect that using them as leverage in negotiation and the odd colonial intervention would be enough right?

This is why I didn't expect the war to happen in the first place. Sustained wars have the ability to sap your military standing and it is almost always better to use strength as a diplomatic tool if you can.

I guess Boris was sent to call the bluff, and not without reason when we look at the Russian performance.

It’s evidence that Russia wasn’t looking for a “reasonable” peace deal but were always angling to conquor the whole thing.

Yes Ukraine should want peace. Nobody disagrees with that but it feels a bit like a Jew wanting peace with Hitler. He was only offering them the gas chamber.

I would hazard a guess that a peace platform with "Russian separatists in Donbass" in 2021 and a peace platform with Russia shelling you and rolling the tanks in in 2022 are two different peace platforms.

Politicians should follow election platforms blindly without regard to changing circumstances like enchanted broomsticks from "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" until an election gives them the opportunity to adopt a new platform.

In that case it's clear that your assumptions about dissident rightists bear little resemblance to reality.

This is just excuse for any form of bad behavior showing motivated reasoning.

There is obviously a big difference with promoting people who are seen as Satanists with being a more traditionalist figure.

If Zelensky managed to avoid war while being more conciliatory towards the Russians most of the people complaining today about him would ignore him. Generally, you must be a massive prick to get plenty of the online right to hate on you. And especially a massive prick in a manner that offends right wingers. Even during the war he could have done certain things differently and been more likeable that is certainly the case.

The number of rightists who will hate any figure just for their ethnicity no matter what they do is rather small. There is a bigger number of people who will excuse any form of bad behavior because of the ethnicity of the person involved and pretend rightists are just full of blind prejudice.

Politicians and influential people who in any way pander even to some extend to the desires of rightists end up with rightists liking them more. Including some of the far right crowd. Suspicions exist for valid reasons. This is the big issue among all the people whining about rightists haters and bigots. They are the hateful ones actually and their complaining is nonsensical. Do you and the people you whine of being unfortunate targets of excessive hatred, ever try to be friendly to at least some of the people you complain about? Of course not.

You can choose to hate on the rightists and excuse pandering to who Zelensky panders towards but then don't complain when they hate back. You aren't owed nor deserve unconditional support.

In the case of Zelensky, the man banned political parties, betrayed the promises he was elected for, shelled civilian areas and let loose war criminal groups and will not allow elections in 2024. Moreover by making his country a thrall to the extreme agendas of factions of western establishment he is doing his country a great evil.

I would have hoped people would have realized by now that it matters who you put in charge in key institutions and it does change the trajectory of a country. The model of these far left circles has self negation of national identity, that is cultural genocide, self hatred, mass migration and promotion of all sorts of far left pathologies which include in the mix discrimination against the natives, hate speech laws, and promotion of LGBT ideology and preferential treatment for them.

Choosing to do this because it is a desperate situation is a stupid choice, but also it downplays Zelensky own complicity.

You have to feel for him, ever so slightly, in that he was elected on a peace platform of negotiating with Russia and the breakaway republics... and then was forced into the war by the Ukrainian ultranationalist in the Ukrainian perma-government who would have 100% assassinated him if he'd actually negotiated agreeable terms or peace.

You have to feel for him, ever so slightly, in that he was elected on a peace platform of negotiating with Russia and the breakaway republics... and then was forced into the war by the Ukrainian ultranationalist in the Ukrainian perma-government who would have 100% assassinated him if he'd actually negotiated agreeable terms or peace the Russian tanks rolling across the border and the associated demands for concessions from NATO that Zelensky wasn't in a position to make.

FIFY

Given how hard the US right is now pulling for "1. feed Ukraine to Putin 2. ???? 3. PROFIT!" - it's hard to blame Zelensky for betting on the other side. He has people's lives at stake. If sucking up to whatever Western weirdo is what helps to get weapons to save a thousand of Ukrainian lives - worth it thousand times over. I mean, the US red tribe can't be both "fuck all those guys over the border" and then be wondering "why those guys over the border suck up to Democrats?!" Because that's their only option, if the right says upfront they want nothing to do with it. Ukraine is toast without Western help, they just don't have the resources to fight Putin alone, especially given they can't afford to get a million of their own killed people like Putin can. So yes, sometimes it would look stupid. Sometimes it will be stupid - desperate people don't always look very attractive.

Given how hard the US right is now pulling for "1. feed Ukraine to Putin 2. ???? 3. PROFIT!"

The implication being that the pro-Ukraine side, by contrast, has a plan?

How'd Syria go?

Libya?

Afghanistan?

Iraq?

Iraq the first time?

Iran?

Afghanistan the first time?

...Like, what's your actual conception of how this is all going to roll out? Putin is couped by the competent, democratic statesmen who form his opposition and then Russia reforms into a functional capitalist democracy, thereby nullifying the threat of their considerable nuclear arsenal? Is that the road you're looking for?

If you want to defend the interventionist consensus, defend the results it has delivered over the last thirty years through the multiple fucking iterations it has played out, very publicly, at vast economic and social and human cost. Show how all the previous disasters were really just faulty perception, or working the kinks out, or something other than simply a blind-spot in your geopolitical perception the size of the fucking moon. I'll cop to not expecting the Russian army to be a shambolic trash-disaster, and sure, right now we are fairly thoroughly mauling that army for pennies on the dollar, given that Ukranian and Russian lives are considered to have no value in the equation. But what's the endgame, here?

What are you willing to call success, such that we can move on, job well done, no more entanglements and expenditures needed?

What are you willing to call failure, such that you agree that it's time to cut our losses?

Because I have heard this fucking song and dance before, where "these next six months are critical" for ten or fifteen or twenty years at a stretch, and my heuristic is that anyone selling that bullshit is either a braindead incompetent or a literal vampire who requires decapitation and a stake through the heart. I refuse to play this game where we pretend that all those previous disasters and betrayals and massacres and atrocities didn't actually happen or were just crazy random happenstance, where we pretend that American foreign policy and leadership should be presumed to be competent and efficient and generally on the ball. I can't pretend that hard, and I have zero respect for those who can.

The implication being that the pro-Ukraine side, by contrast, has a plan?

Whatever plan they may or may not have, it's certainly less stupid than Carlson's "we feed Ukraine to Putin and he'll battle China for US" or Vivek's "We feed Ukraine to Putin and there would be peace in our time". But I suspect, different "pro-Ukraine" sides - many of which aren't as pro-Ukraine as they present - have different plans. US Democrats probably try to maximize the profit (both pecuniary and political) from the war while committing to as little as possible and not letting Russia become unpredictable (because that looks like work and who needs that), most of the EU tries to show off as much as possible while doing as little as possible, Ukrainians try to survive...

Like, what's your actual conception of how this is all going to roll out?

Given current players, likely pretty badly for all involved. Probably there will be some temporary ceasefire and then a new war in 5-10 years, and so on. Until Russia finally collapses, but that can take a long while - last time it took 70 years.

But what's the endgame, here?

We all dead, sooner or later? I mean, what exactly you expect the "endgame" to be? It's not some kind of Magic The Gathering match, where you sit down, play a round, then come up and go back home. Who told you there's such a thing as "endgame" at all? The war surely will end, one way or another, at least all the previous wars did. How it will end depends on a lot of things, and anybody who says they can predict it, are lying.

What are you willing to call failure, such that you agree that it's time to cut our losses?

If you approach any task with "when are we calling it a failure finally", then yes, the question would only be when you call it a failure. But then, why you are surprised there are so many failures? You're literally rooting for it, so you're getting what you asked for.

If you approach any task with "when are we calling it a failure finally", then yes, the question would only be when you call it a failure. But then, why you are surprised there are so many failures? You're literally rooting for it, so you're getting what you asked for.

...I'm not sure where to even begin with this statement. I cannot form a sensible model of a thought-process that would have this statement as its output. Could you elaborate?

Do you agree that the american occupation of Afghanistan was a failure?

Do you think pessimism regarding American foreign policy or military competence or the general strategic goals in the invasion of Afghanistan is the primary cause of that failure? That if we had only pushed harder, been willing to commit more, worthwhile outcomes could have been secured?

We all dead, sooner or later?

We are all dead sooner or later no matter what policy we pursue toward Russia or Ukraine. You are acting as though your policy preferences require zero justification. That is a pretty wild response to someone pointing to three decades of extremely ruinous policy failure.

Why do you believe your prefered policy a good idea? Why is it a better idea than doing nothing?

Do you understand that your prefered policies have costs? That they have consequences? That if government is a coherent concept at all, you need to actually try to anticipate these things and steer a course toward positive outcomes? Is politics literally nothing more to you than good fucking vibes?

How it will end depends on a lot of things, and anybody who says they can predict it, are lying.

If no one knows anything, why are you criticizing the people who don't want to spend a lot of money and resources escalating this war and its attendant tail-risks? Why do you even have an opinion?

Whatever plan they may or may not have, it's certainly less stupid than Carlson's "we feed Ukraine to Putin and he'll battle China for US" or Vivek's "We feed Ukraine to Putin and there would be peace in our time".

Prove it. Support that statement. Why is it better? On the basis of what data? What leads you to this conclusion?

Why do you believe your prefered policy a good idea? Why is it a better idea than doing nothing?

Do you understand that your prefered policies have costs? That they have consequences? That if government is a coherent concept at all, you need to actually try to anticipate these things and steer a course toward positive outcomes? Is politics literally nothing more to you than good fucking vibes?

You're cheating.

  1. You point out instances where we intervened and shitty situations failed to improve or did, in fact, get worse. What about instances where the isolationism and appeasement carried the day?

How'd Rwanda go? I guess there weren't any stars and stripes draped caskets flying home, but at the same time hundreds of thousands of people died in large part due to the apathy of the West - your choice to do nothing also carries consequences. I can even imagine a hypothetical counterfactual where we did intervene, and after averting genocide and saving a quarter million lives, the isolationists could still I-told-you-so about the failed Rwandan state, neocolonialism, continued ethnic violence between Hutus and Tutsis, incompetent American foreign policy wonks, whatever.

Similarly, there's a parallel universe where we failed to arm South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and any or all of them fell into the orbit of China/USSR. Any of these countries could easily have been failed states suffering under communism rather than the prosperous, developed nations they are today. Airlifting supplies to West Berlin? Fuck that, have you seen the price of sugar in New York?

  1. Many of the examples you give are just categorically different from Ukraine. Selling/donating a country arms to defend it's right to self-determination is distinct from us putting boots on the ground and invading a sovereign nation ourselves. If the Ukrainians decide the juice isn't worth the squeeze, and hey, whatever, those Russians aren't that bad anyways.

  2. Implicit in your writing is that Ukrainians lack agency and are just useful pawns for the West to push around a board. My impression is that support in Ukraine for prosecuting the war is fairly high. Internationally, many loathe Putin even more than they used to and support for NATO (cold comfort to you, perhaps) and the West are boosted. Again, the inverse of many of the examples you gave, no?

Failure would be Ukraine being completely conquered and subjugated by Russia. Failure would be the Ukrainian army deserting en masse, as they lose a sense of national unity and their appetite for the war. Failure would be swathes of the world aligning with Russia, China and/or communism/authoritarianism.

As you point out, it's harder to paint a rosy picture of success. Childish dreams of kumbaya moments where Russia and China join our big hugpile and all the nations of the earth are buddy-buddy as we blast off in SpaceX rockets to other solar systems are unlikely to follow from sending Ukraine some artillery shells and tanks. Success may just be another frozen conflict and DMZ around Crimea and the Donbas. But the Ukrainians can make that decision for themselves, and if they decide to fight, I believe that they should be given the means to do so within reason.

Overseas military adventures don't particularly interest me, and I align with you in large part in your condemnation of the wars we have prosecuted in the last half-century. But I disagree that absolute isolationism in every scenario is the appropriate heuristic to pull from that. s

...I'm not sure where to even begin with this statement. I cannot form a sensible model of a thought-process that would have this statement as its output. Could you elaborate?

Elaborate what? You pre-declare that US intervention must be a failure and the only question is when we recognize that failure. In that model, of course it'd be a failure. I just don't accept that model as something having to do with the reality.

Do you agree that the american occupation of Afghanistan was a failure?

Irrelevant for the question being discussed.

That if we had only pushed harder, been willing to commit more, worthwhile outcomes could have been secured?

No, I think if they pushed smarter, and been willing to do different things, then yes, they could be. It's not a direct function of dollars spent or boots standing on the ground. At least not that alone. But again, this is irrelevant for the question discussed.

That is a pretty wild response to someone pointing to three decades of extremely ruinous policy failure.

Again, policy failures in Afghanistan are not relevant here, as we're not talking about Afghanistan.

If no one knows anything,

I didn't say "no one knows anything", I said exact picture years ahead is not possible to predict right now. That's not the same thing at all. If you demand "before we do anything, tell me and guarantee me you can exactly predict what would happen in a multi-factor hyper-complex event 10 years ahead" - then of course you won't be able to do a single thing. That's not how things are done. You have a general goal, and general means of achieving it - in this case, trim Russia's ambition of territorial conquest in Europe, and giving Ukrainians the weapons - and then you adapt your tactics depending on the circumstances arriving.

you criticizing the people who don't want to spend a lot of money and resources escalating this war

The war is already "escalated". That choice is past us. The question is - does the "collective security" arrangement in Europe survive, or do we go back to "every little country for themselves" and the inevitable endless bloodbath that follows that. There's still a chance to preserve that order, but it is going away fast. And more we talk about "when we already recognize we lost everything and should give up?" the sooner we lose everything, including all this nice cushy civilization we enjoy so much. It's much more fragile than commonly thought.

Is politics literally nothing more to you than good fucking vibes?

I can't even begin to understand what you mean here, but let me assure you in one thing. Contrary to the belief popular on many college campuses, adding swearing to your argument does not make it more convincing, it just makes you look more unhinged.

Prove it. Support that statement. Why is it better? On the basis of what data? What leads you to this conclusion?

Observation of the existing facts. When somebody literally proposes as a solution for the war the situation from which the war started, I conclude he's either ignoramus or is lying to my eyes. When somebody proposes a bunch of non-sequiturs as a supposedly logical argument to a goal - I assume he is either bad at logic or is lying. Carlson has been proposing wildly illogical concept of if we let Russia consume Ukraine, Putin somehow would be friendly to the US (this is laughable to anyone who listened for the last 5 years of Russian propaganda, which has been full of mouth-foaming anti-Western paranoia, and their whole geopolitical concept is rooted at opposition to the West, which is weak and decadent and soul-less) and somehow commit himself to fighting China (despite Russia having zero motive for that and tons of motives to the contrary) - and doesn't even bother to support his fantasies with anything but other wild stories (like the stupid biolab shit). That makes about as much sense as saying if only we helped Hitler to introduce common sense banking regulations, he'd be off the whole Jews thing - about that level of silliness. Vivek is simpler, he's just playing ignorant. He's proposing a solution which he must know - since he is not actually dumb - is not solving anything because that's where the war started. But it sounds nice to people who are ignorant in the matter, and makes him sound like he has solutions for everything to people that want somebody to have solutions. And also to the people who think "fuck Ukraine, better give that money to me!" but are ashamed to say it aloud, so they are looking for someone to say the same but in a smart way, so it doesn't sound asshole-ish but geopolitically smart. That's all his play, the whole con. Fortunately, he's also irrelevant since there's no chance he'd be anywhere near any real power anytime soon.

Our current plan is to give Ukraine every weapon we have, regardless of whether or not the Ukrainians are able to win the war, letting the war drag on while we essentially use up our weapons in Ukraine (which will probably lessen our ability to defend Taiwan (and thus secure our chips supply), lose credibility as it becomes obvious that we can no longer actually deliver on our promises, and Ukraine will probably lose Donbas anyway.

I think it would be better to cede Donbas and arm the remaining and build NATO bases in West Ukraine as a deterrent to further incursions.

Our current plan is to give Ukraine every weapon we have

This is obviously false. On the contrary, the plan is explicitly not to give many weapons - such as long-range rockets, planes, and many other things - or at least delay giving them as long as possible. If the plan really were "to give Ukraine every weapon we have" it's impossible to explain why ATACMS rockets or modern planes were not given or why modern tanks were only given late this year - we certainly had them way before that, they weren't created this year.

regardless of whether or not the Ukrainians are able to win the war

"Win the war" is a very vague thing - and the extent of how much Ukrainians win right now is a direct function of how much weapons (and what kind of weapons) they have. Right now, their air capabilities are minuscule, and they long-range strike capabilities are such that they can only do sporadic one-off hits, after months of preparation. This is way short of "every weapon we have", unless US military has been lying to us for years about all those advanced weaponry they are supposed to have, and somehow instead spent all those billions on building mocks of all that weaponry that doesn't exist in reality. I don't think even the most committed conspiracy nuts go that far.

letting the war drag on while we essentially use up our weapons in Ukraine

Giving enough weaponry not to lose but not enough to decisively win - which was the actual plan for the last 1.5 years - is a great way to let the war drag on. You concept does not offer any explanation why we're discussing long-range rockets today and not in February 2022. Mine explains it perfectly. I think the concept that explains the available facts

I think it would be better to cede Donbas

Did you wake up yesterday from a 20 year coma? Ukraine has been "ceding Donbass" since 2014. That's when it came under Russian control (fun fact: the guy who organized it, Igor Girkin, is now being slowly tortured to death in Russian prison, because that's how Russian "thank you" looks like) and since then, Ukraine didn't have any control there and could do nothing about it. Just as they could do nothing about Russia owning Crimea (besides completely toothless and impotent "sanctions"). Presenting it as some kind of a "solution", while this was exactly the starting point of the war, is completely bewildering - it's like saying "we could avoid WW2 if only we let Hitler arm himself and signed a peace treaty with him and given him Sudetenland". And it didn't happen in the last century - it happened less than 10 years ago! And still you feel free to completely ignore it. Astonishing.

build NATO bases in West Ukraine as a deterrent to further incursions.

So, your solution is instead of having Ukrainians fight Russians with Western weaponry, is to have Western troops do the same? That would go just fine with German, French and Belgian voters. They dream about their soldiers dying on Ukrainian soil, I am sure, and despite now willing to send about 1 tank per month as soon as the war is out of TV screens, they will surely be glad so send hundreds of them and live bodies in the harm's way because... what? I am not sure how this makes any sense.

fun fact: the guy who organized it, Igor Girkin, is now being slowly tortured to death in Russian prison, because that's how Russian "thank you" looks like

according to unconfirmed reports they let Ukrainian POW to attack and beat him

arm the remaining and build NATO bases in West Ukraine as a deterrent to further incursions.

wait

are you against sending weapons to Ukraine or not?

And combo "cede Donbas" and "send NATO soldiers to fight against Russia" is quite curious and new to me.

"we feed Ukraine to Putin and he'll battle China for US"

This would actually have been the best option, but only if it was taken several years ago. Russia and China uniting and working together are the only real powerbloc capable of dealing with the US - if they were in opposition to each other, or if Russia was firmly a part of the western community, the global situation would look very different right now. Russia has no motivation to go into Ukraine if NATO doesn't expand to their borders and they're a respected member of the western coalition - so in that universe the war just doesn't happen anyway, given that one of the roots of this conflict was over Ukraine moving into the EU orbit or the Russian orbit. There's a decent bit of evidence that Russia actually did want to be a part of the western community and would have preferred this to being part of the "global south"/jungle, and I think that world is a much nicer place to live in this one.

But that ship has sailed, and if Carlson is suggesting that the US try to pivot to that option now then he's deluded. China and Russia have a lot of reasons to be enemies, but the current situation has forced them together - and done so in a way that's going to be hard to disentangle. Both of them know that they're unable to take on the US individually, and at the same time they think that the US is impossible to negotiate with and an untrustworthy partner. Serious thinkers have said for years that one of the chief goals of US foreign policy should be to make sure that Russia and China absolutely hate each other, which isn't really that hard of a goal to achieve - but US policy over the last few decades has just brought them closer and closer together, and made it clear that continuing to use the US dollar and existing global financial infrastructure is a critical weakness. What can the US even credibly offer Russia to pull them away from China at this point? Even if Trump gets in and manages to overcome the deep state inertia preventing him from normalising relationships with Russia, I don't think they'd be willing to come back to the table because they've gotten too invested in their own alternatives.

Even if Russia and China disliked each other as much as, say, India and China (an immense long shot), Russia isn’t sacrificing millions of men, the entire Eastern third of their country, all their power in Central Asia and unfathomable amounts of treasure on some bullshit crusade against the CCP at America’s behest lmao. Ironically there’s nothing more neocon ‘game theory’ than trying to play CK2 or Civilization in real life and thinking the US can bait Russia into fighting WW3 for us.

Making peace with China is easier, more desirable and more in America’s interests than making peace with Russia.

Russia isn’t sacrificing millions of men, the entire Eastern third of their country, all their power in Central Asia and unfathomable amounts of treasure on some bullshit crusade against the CCP at America’s behest lmao.

You're totally right, but it isn't like the US would need them to be at war. They'd just need them to be mildly hostile to each other, to the point that they'd be more willing to work with the US than their immediate, border-sharing neighbour. There isn't even a need to go to war with China in this case - they'd be too economically dependent. If you made sure the US didn't ship their entire manufacturing industry to China in the 90s as well, the differential in capacity would be so massive conflict just wouldn't even need to happen.

Iraq?

I sometimes consider the hypothetical world in which the 2003 invasion was skipped. It's obviously hard to predict such outcomes, but I think it's not implausible a continued Hussein regime might not be better for the average Iraqi. It's not like they had a particularly good human rights record.

Sure, there was a lot of destruction from the war (which I'd generally agree was poorly-conceived), but how would Iraq have faced the Arab Spring? It seems plausible that could have ended less like ISIS and more like the still-ongoing Syrian Civil War, likely complete with Russia intentionally bombing civilian targets and waves of refugees fleeing to Europe.

For all it's faults in the invasion, the country now could be much worse than it is today. Which is distinctly not an endorsement of the operation, merely a pause for consideration.

The Arab spring was the US as well... Saying Iraq would've been destabilized anyways because the US would start destabilizing MENA countries again a decade later doesn't really make US foreign policy look better.

Amusingly, in a late 200X with no Iraq War, then the Iranians still have a nuclear program in its later stages, only for it's initial target. Who would still be, at best, maintaining the strategic bluff of ambiguity in hopes of deterance, as they did before, but with the understanding that their most significant enemy truly was pursuing greater WMDs.

Black humor, but humor none the less.

For all it's faults in the invasion, the country now could be much worse than it is today.

It could be. The actual result was sufficiently awful that I would prefer to roll those dice. Certainly the difference between the predicted and actual outcomes leaves me with zero faith in the wisdom of further interventionism.

For the record, I agree with your take. The comment is more referencing cases in which people rhetorically imply that the country is worse off than otherwise, which I think is less clear.

What are you willing to call success, such that we can move on, job well done, no more entanglements and expenditures needed?

It is not a board game. USA will continue to have relations with all involved parties, it does not end.

...Like, what's your actual conception of how this is all going to roll out? Putin is couped by the competent, democratic statesmen who form his opposition and then Russia reforms into a functional capitalist democracy, thereby nullifying the threat of their considerable nuclear arsenal? Is that the road you're looking for?

No, not expecting that. I would settle for Russia defanged enough that they shut up about USSR-sized sphere of influence. And will stop thinking they can take on NATO or countries supported by NATO.

It appears that going through ginormous stockpiles produced by USSR may be needed before that will happen.

(obviously, settling for being corrupt and internally violent and sort-of-useful as sort-of counterbalance against China would be nice, but sadly they actually believed that they are still superpower entitled to rule over central and eastern Europe...)

but sadly they actually believed that they are still superpower entitled to rule over central and eastern Europe

How do you arrive at this conclusion from Russia invading what was literally their own satellite state for 20 years after the USSR fell until the US took it away? It's just completely out of touch with reality.

This "Russia = USSR" logic doesn't work out the way you think it does.

Firstly, it means inheriting the legacy of the Holodomor. Attempting to claim a moral right to rule a people after you attempt to genocide them is...something.

But even ignoring that, the USSR literally agreed to dissolve into independent states in 1991. If the Soviets "owned" Ukraine, then Russia inheriting their claims means it has no claim as such over Ukraine.

Also, the Budapest Memo had Russia agree to not use military force against Ukraine.

You can talk all you want about "satellite states" and what not, Russia already agreed decades ago it wouldn't do what it has been doing since 2014.

I'm not claiming that Russia = USSR.

USSR controlled Ukraine more or less directly up until 91.

Ukraine was then it's own state on paper, but in reality a Russian satellite state up until 2014. "A russian satellite state for 20 years" Technically 23.

It only entered the western orbit after the coup in 2014. (Well the western part of it)

Russia isn't trying to expand its sphere of influence to USSR levels, that would mean going as far west as Germany. It's just trying to maintain it at post USSR levels and even that is seen as some extreme aggressive act while NATO bombs and murders everyone outside of the west indiscriminately and people that think they're civilized make endless excuses for the abuse.

Ukraine was then it's own state on paper, but in reality a Russian satellite state up until 2014.

Doesn't really matter. Russia signed the agreements to let Ukraine be independent. Can't complain if it actually exercises that status.

Russia isn't trying to expand its sphere of influence to USSR levels

Yeah, because it can't. There's no going back in that regard unless NATO itself breaks up, and Putin's invasion literally reversed the flagging support for that organization. Talk about a strategic blunder. What it is doing, however, is trying to gobble up nations while it can to its west. Because once the NATO aegis is established, it's over, that country is not coming back.

NATO bombs and murders everyone outside of the west indiscriminately and people that think they're civilized make endless excuses for the abuse.

Which bombs are we referring to? Bosnia and Herzegovina? Serbia? Afghanistan? The Gulf of Aden? Libya? Syria?

Firstly, it means inheriting the legacy of the Holodomor. Attempting to claim a moral right to rule a people after you attempt to genocide them is...something.

It's geopolitics, who the fuck cares. If tanks and jet fighters required newborns to be put in blenders in order to function, nothing about our world would change.

I think a great many people care about moral justification for a claim of rulership.

Indeed, we are all here because, centuries ago, some opportunistic Anglos and Scots had questions about rulership.

I base it on treating Ukraine as own satellite state and on their comments and actions concerning Baltics and Poland.

It is not a board game. USA will continue to have relations with all involved parties, it does not end.

Okay, what's your assessment of what we've achieved versus what we paid from this approach to date?

No, not expecting that. I would settle for Russia defanged enough that they shut up about USSR-sized sphere of influence.

We defanged Iraq very thoroughly in the first gulf war. Hussein no longer was able to exercise territorial ambitions. Do you find that this made the world a better place?

We defanged Iraq very thoroughly in the first gulf war. Hussein no longer was able to exercise territorial ambitions. Do you find that this made the world a better place?

My knowledge about middle east and wars there is far more limited than of eastern Europe so I do not feel very qualified to answer.

But my expectation was that Russia was going to start serious war with someone at some point (or recreate USSR by repeated invasions and countries surrendering). So funding defence of Ukraine is preferable in my opinion to fighting direct NATO-Russia war that would be far more problematic in many aspects.

Okay, what's your assessment of what we've achieved versus what we paid from this approach to date?

That it was worth spending this funds to achieve this, though less innocent lives would be lost if materiel would be provided earlier, on larger scale and more decisively rather then being dripped bit by bit.

(disclaimer: I am from Poland, not from USA - for me aggressive and too powerful Russia is top1 geopolitic problem)

that they shut up about USSR-sized sphere of influence.

USSR sized sphere of influence? Ukraine is closer to Moscow than Canada is to Washington.

They also made repeated comments and actions concerning Baltics and Poland. I am well aware that they have not invaded this countries outright, so far.

But I want them to stop completely and cease any military threats whatsoever (for start, stop repeated airspace incursion with their military planes). And ensure that their officials makes threats/jokes/suggestions about invading Poland as often as Germans ones are doing as of 2023.

And I want all US servicemen and equipment brought back to the USA, all foreign military entanglements ended, and for our supposed allies to defend themselves.

...Like, what's your actual conception of how this is all going to roll out? Putin is couped by the competent, democratic statesmen who form his opposition and then Russia reforms into a functional capitalist democracy, thereby nullifying the threat of their considerable nuclear arsenal? Is that the road you're looking for?

I think it's more like this

That is their “plan”, pretty much. Or that there will be a glorious campaign of liberation ending in Crimea, and Putler will capitulate because he’s actually a paper tiger. Or that he’ll be couped by a second Gorbachev/Yeltsin who will do the same. Or that he’ll not actually be replaced by anyone, and instead there’ll be another Time of Troubles and the Russian state will disintegrate, and there won’t be any negative repercussions because it’s not like the collapse of a state with thousands of nuclear warheads would result in that. I’m not being flippant. That’s the “plan”, as expressed by their own words and narratives.

What precisely do you think happens when a state with thousands of nuclear warheads collapses?

Something definitely worse than, say, Ukraine agreeing to a ceasefire.

I assume you mean that "something" happens to Ukraine?

I recall the men with their hands on the buttons didn't launch even back during the Cold War when the chain of command was intact and clear. You think they will have more resolve/recklessness when it isn't?

That's not what I meant, but that would also be conceivable in that case, obviously.

I meant rogue states, terrorist groups, organized crime groups etc. gaining control of nuclear warheads and using them for blackmail etc. Nuclear warheads entering the black market. Ethnic conflicts, humanitarian catastrophe etc.

I don't think any of this needs to be spelled out actually, but I'll assume your question was honest.

My question was honest in that I wanted to hear what you had in mind when you alluded to that - some specific outcomes or just a generic nuclear scare.

It looks like whatever consequences there are would largely befall Russia itself. If the West can be confident that the concerted Russian nuclear stockpile is, at worst, MAD, surely they can laugh off a single straggler or two who tries to point a fraction of that stockpile at them?

More comments

get weapons to save a thousand of Ukrainian lives

This is a bit off topic, but as a realist I really wonder at the neocon thinking here. I'm asking you since you are vocal about your beliefs, but really anyone jumping into this question would be fine.

Assume you are an average Ukrainian. For reference that is someone probably working Ukraine's most common job, a factory worker, making the Ukrainian median salary of 600usd a month. If you live in the South from Odessa to Dontesk, or the east from Donetsk to Kharkiv than you more than likely already speak Russian, especially if you are in a city. You've lived in a country that was a Soviet territory, then a Russian puppet state, and now a western puppet state. What would most likely happen to you in the following scenarios:

-Russia invaded and the Ukrainian leadership completely capitulated and the war was over before it even started.

-Russia invades and you fight back, the west is initially supportive but pulls its support when it becomes clear the war has become one of attrition and there is no path to victory. You lose the war a couple years later, sometime in 2024-25. (current timeline)

-Russia invades and you fight back, the west gives you whatever support you want, the war drags on for years and years as more and more are sent to a front increasingly supplied by more modern and deadly weapons systems.

To me if I'm the average Ukrainian I prefer scenario 1. I probably still have a pretty below average life, maybe I keep a good mindset about it, maybe alcohol is cheap enough it doesn't matter. I don't die though, no conscription, and as long as I'm not part of the ultra nationalist movement I'm unlikely to see much of a difference, there is a new set of corrupt officials to bribe here and there to get through daily life, but life is mostly the same. At worst there is a major uptick in terrorist attacks as ultra nationalists shift to insurgency type tactics. Though without western support it's not clear how long these would last.

Since I anticipate you will take issue with the framing and suggest a hypothetical where Ukraine gets all the aid it wants and then wins and takes back all it's territory and for some reason Russia decides to never look west again... What wonder weapon would result in this actually happening? Even if we gave them nukes that seems to just result in a stalemate, since if Ukraine nuked Crimea* or Moscow, surely Russia would make sure Kiev no longer existed. In fact given the sheer number of nukes Russia has it might make sure most of Western Europe and the US no longer exist as well. Other than that there doesn't seem to be any conventional weapon that doesn't simply result in more escalation. They are already scraping the bottom of the barrel for conscripts and are at a serious population disadvantage. Sometimes surrender is the better move and the one that saves more lives, if it didn't and everyone that surrendered instantly died than it really wouldn't exist as an option.

You left out (4). The west gives you proper weapons and you win the war. 30 years later your children are richer than England.

This has happened before. Poland is on path to be wealthier than England in 10 years. The average dude might already be there.

Your preferred option sounds like I’ll accept be a drunkard and survive my life. (4) provides the option to have a large successful family. The EV is much much higher.

Did you not read the rest? I want an explanation of how that is possible before we entertain it. Since there doesn't seem to be any weapon that would win the war for Ukraine and every new weapons system we supply further risks nuclear apocalypse.

Since I anticipate you will take issue with the framing and suggest a hypothetical where Ukraine gets all the aid it wants and then wins and takes back all it's territory and for some reason Russia decides to never look west again... What wonder weapon would result in this actually happening? Even if we gave them nukes that seems to just result in a stalemate, since if Ukraine nuked Crimea* or Moscow, surely Russia would make sure Kiev no longer existed. In fact given the sheer number of nukes Russia has it might make sure most of Western Europe and the US no longer exist as well. Other than that there doesn't seem to be any conventional weapon that doesn't simply result in more escalation. They are already scraping the bottom of the barrel for conscripts and are at a serious population disadvantage. Sometimes surrender is the better move and the one that saves more lives, if it didn't and everyone that surrendered instantly died than it really wouldn't exist as an option.

We’ve given them 1980’s weapon systems and they held their own against Russia. Modern stuff would do it. American has won its wars with air supremacy so modern fighter planes with the proper weapon systems would do that. It’s much tougher to take out all the Russian artillery with artillery.

and with what pilots would the planes fly? A massive airforce requires even more massive logistics to keep it running, Ukraine has had difficulties even keeping their tiny airforce from being targeted and is forced to regularly fly them from place to place so they don't get taken out by Russian missile strikes. There is no way we can just park a few 100 f16s somewhere in Ukraine and maintain them without them being targeted even if there was such a location where they could be kept and maintained which there isn't...

This is the problem with all the wishful thinking of the pro Ukraine side. There is no depth to it. It's just endless handwaving away all the issues. How do you completely and unanimously win against Russia? Oh just give them airplanes. Wow. Insightful. Meanwhile 200-400k Ukrainians are dead up to 50k just from this doomed summer offensive and all those fancy western Leopards and Challengers are useless because war has evolved and between drones and remote mining they are sitting ducks. Ukrainians are crawling through tree lines at night to lead assaults on trenches after softening them up with artillery. That's so far the only strategy that gets them any progress. So forgive me if I doubt that America winning against 3rd worlders via airplanes isn't a guaranteed win.

We have more air defense systems too.

400k won’t die if they are properly armed.

400k dead though is a reasonable price to pay to get to exists as a people. We fought our revolutionary war. Every people who have ever existed fought for their lands.

Belarus isn’t do that great.

Russia has plenty of AD systems but Ukraine can still hit them. Problem right now is that drones are too cheap relative to the cost of any of the intercept systems. Can easily just over saturate and overwhelm them.

To get to exist as a people

See this right here makes no sense to me. Are you claiming that all of Ukraine will be killed if Russia wins? Some kind of Nazi concentration camps but on an even grander scale? That seems incredibly unlikely, probably not even possible given logistics of attempting to round up all of the Ukrainians to exterminate them, unless Russia goes total mobilization or something.

If you're claiming some kind of more hazy spiritual collective sense, then I think you really misunderstand how divided things are in Ukraine.

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Since there doesn't seem to be any weapon that would win the war for Ukraine

Why you think so? Handful of outdated HIMARS was quite significant, handful of Storm Shadows keeps participating in meetings of Russian generals and so on.

every new weapons system we supply further risks nuclear apocalypse.

that is blatant nonsense and repeating russian propaganda warmongering

You referring to the Admiral that showed up on tv today?

The only thing that has made a difference in the war so far has been numbers. Ukraine had more of them at the beginning of the war. Their offensive on Kherson pulled enough Russians from the north that they were able to roll through the Kharkov areas. Russia bailed on holding Kherson to make the front more defensible until they could catch up. Russia mobilized more and that mostly equalized the forces and since then Ukraine has made no real gains despite the huge injection of western kit for their Spring offensive.

that is blatant nonsense and repeating russian propaganda warmongering

This is childish and not an argument.

You referring to the Admiral that showed up on tv today?

no, I specifically not mentioned admiral but more generic term as I wanted to wait till it is properly confirmed before I treat this claim seriously (that some high-ranking people dies is pretty confirmed, as far as I know)

Did you not read the rest? I want an explanation of how that is possible before we entertain it.

We keep supplying Ukraine, Russia runs out of will, manpower, or materiel before Ukraine does.

every new weapons system we supply further risks nuclear apocalypse.

Which doesn't mean they can't be supplied. "Putin might push the button" isn't an insta-win for Russia.

They have around 4x the population of Ukraine, for Russia to run out of manpower before Ukraine they would need to have a more than 4:1 loss ratio. I don't think even the Ukrainians are claiming that and they're been claiming absolutely absurd things the whole time.

The military production is up in the air, but so far Russian production appears to be up significantly from what it was prior to the war. They might've exhausted soviet stockpiles but they're producing 1k tanks per year, we're sending 31 Abrams. The US is trying to up artillery shell production but it costs 10x as much to make a single shell here. We've gone and strong armed basically every ally we have to provide them with their spares and even sent cluster munitions when that ran out.

It's just not realistic thinking. It's cynical as hell to boot, basically saying eventually enough Ukrainians will die that Ukraine will win.

They have around 4x the population of Ukraine, for Russia to run out of manpower before Ukraine they would need to have a more than 4:1 loss ratio. I don't think even the Ukrainians are claiming that and they're been claiming absolutely absurd things the whole time.

The Ukrainian government has not generally reported losses but in December 2022 estimated 13k lost. Meanwhile the UK MoD figure for Russian casualty estimates from December 1st 2022 was 89k. If you were to accept their claims then by those loss ratios they could. Which isn't to say the claims are close to accurate but that it is not more absurd if taking those absurd claims as true to believe (or that they could claim) that they would win by attrition.

89k casualties does not mean anywhere close to 89k KIA though.

They have around 4x the population of Ukraine, for Russia to run out of manpower before Ukraine they would need to have a more than 4:1 loss ratio. I don't think even the Ukrainians are claiming that and they're been claiming absolutely absurd things the whole time.

My dad recently complained to me that Western artillery has a higher effective range than Russian artillery. Maybe by 50% or so.

How much do you think this means in terms of k/d ratio? 30%? What about a 100% range difference? 200%? At what point does it become clear that technological superiority can, in fact, offset virtually any difference in manpower?

What weapons the west gave to Poland that allowed it to beat Soviet military and throw their shackles? What military strategy was used?

(4) provides the option to have a large successful family. The EV is much much higher.

Why wasn’t Ukraine on this path before the war? Poland started off around where Ukraine was in early 1990s. It failed to thrive, to put it mildly, and the pre-war trajectory was not optimistic. The neighboring puppet state of Russia, Belarus, has done much better for itself.

If the plan is to build stronger ties with the West, join EU etc similarly to what Poland did, isn’t better strategy to cut the losses, stop the bleed, and negotiate peace with Russia, where you cede some territories in exchange for Russia acceding to your western strategy in future?

Ukraine never left Russias orbit. They only reoriented to economic integration with Europe after Maiden. Poland well the breakup of the USSR made it not possible for them to do war so they had an easier route.

I specifically mentioned the Russian puppet state of Belarus to point out that you can do much better than Ukraine while remaining in Russian orbit. My point was that if Ukraine experienced decades of stagnation while in Russian orbit while Belarus grew, why expect much different outcomes in western orbit?

Poland well the breakup of the USSR made it not possible for them to do war so they had an easier route.

Poland left the Communist Bloc years before USSR broke up. They managed that through diplomacy and negotiations, not western warmongering. Ukraine should try the same.

Again, though, we're back to the question of why it is that "not surrendering when you're invaded" is "Western warmongering".

The person I replied to suggested that Ukraine should take western weapons and win the war, and gave Poland as an example of this as a successful strategy. I pointed out that Poland achieved success by peaceful diplomatic means. If the West pushed weapons into Polish hands at that time, that would have been clear warmongering, because history proved that peaceful solution was possible. I did not refer to the recent events in Ukraine as western warmongering, only the hypothetical scenario where west pushes citizens of Polish People’s Republic to war with Soviet Union.

Now, let me explicitly say here that the current western strategy of funding Ukrainian military with the explicit, openly repeated goal of weakening Russian state and military, under the assumption of good ROI in terms of monetary spend/materiel relative to achieved damage to Russia, and with zero concern for Ukrainian blood being spilled to achieve these goals, and disregard for ultimate likelihood of Ukrainian victory, very much is warmongering.

Without the western “support”, the (stupid and evil) Russian invasion would be over with by now, and much less blood would have been spilled, and wealth and livelihoods destroyed, for pretty much the same ultimate geopolitical outcome. However, the West has clearly chosen strategy of slow trickle of support to pull in and attrit Russians as much as possible.

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Ukraine should try the same.

They did. Russia invaded.

Twice.

Yeah, they signed agreements, and then didn’t keep to them. That’s not how you conduct diplomacy.

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What haven't we given them that would actually make a difference? The First Marine Division?

I think your options are too limited. Right now, it seems that Russia doesn't have the combat power to push much further into Ukraine than it already has, at least not faster than a snail's pace, nor to do anything dramatic like capture Kiev, regardless of how much help we do or don't give to Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Ukraine doesn't seem to have much chance of pushing the Russians back any time soon, regardless of how much help we do or don't give them. I don't think this is going to change either aside from large-scale direct intervention from Western troops, or several decades training up Ukrainian forces.

So the only practical options are probably 1. Continue to feed men on both sides into a pointless meat grinder, or 2. Sign some sort of peace treaty giving Russia at least most of what they already captured officially.

I don't think they have to push further into Ukraine though. They have the combat power to maintain the pressure they're putting on Ukraine, whereas Ukraine does not. Ukraine lacks any industry to produce more weapons so without western support they'd be short on those. They also lack people, so even with western support if its just a long war of attrition eventually Ukraine collapses. Attritional wars are ugly and boring, which makes western public interest less likely to stay high. If Russia were to make big gains the western MIC could sell that as a threat and push for more support, if Ukraine makes gains people keep supporting them because they think they can win. Long ugly stalemate of a meat grinder with Ukraine eventually collapsing seems the most likely outcome with current western support.

I don't know that they'd go for a peace treaty after the last one was just used to arm and organize Ukraine. If they did it'd be seen as just a pause in the war while both sides reorganized imo, not a real peace.

  1. Sign some sort of peace treaty giving Russia at least most of what they already captured officially.

Why you think that it does not end with Russia restarting pointless meat grinder few months or years later?

Zelenski has of course ruled this out completely, publically and repeatedly -- it's probable that this is kayfabe to some extent, but he certainly gives the impression of being drunk on koolaid.

I guess he's an actor -- maybe a better one than I'd assumed?

I don't believe for a second that giving weapons to Ukraine is saving Ukrainian lives. Especially now that it's apparently devolved into a static almost trench warfare situation. Every weapon given to them prolongs the conflict by X amount, and certainly results in some amount of casualties during that interval.

Of course, if Ukrainians gave up immediately, most of their lives - except those who Russian would execute, torture to death or otherwise "disappear", but how many could they realistically kill? probably not too many, right? - would be saved, and they would live happily ever after under the benevolent rule of Putin. Too bad they are too stupid to realize that and give up finally...

I don’t think anyone supposes that Putin is a benevolent leader.

I don’t see Ukraine being particularly worse under Russian suzerainty than under some other conditions. It’s never going to be paradise.

That's one part of it. Another is that it's not like the alternative is between slaughter and no slaughter. Based on the observed behavior of Ukrainian national guard and police units and paramilitaries, any Ukrainian territory being recaptured would also result in mass executions and torture, "disappearances" etc.

An excellent point. The Ukrainian ultra-nationalists have not been kind to the Russian speaking populations over the last decade plus.

What's your estimation on the amount of these that have happened in the territories Ukraine has already recaptured from the invasion?

How am I supposed to have estimations? After all, I'm sure nobody dares to try keeping track or count of these. In fact, nobody involved in any way has any incentive to raise the issue at all.

Surrendering seems unlikely to be good solution or better solution.

That’s far from clear

Well, I assume that if Ukraine would surrender and be digested by Russia - then Russia would proceed with next invasion. So Ukrainians would be dying in large numbers in stupid war started by Russia anyway AND you would have Russian occupation with all its consequences.

Well, I assume that if Ukraine would surrender and be digested by Russia - then Russia would proceed with next invasion.

You assume that (at least in part) because that's what you've been told -- upon which first principles do you base this assumption?

Declarations and behaviour of the current Russian government. And history of what Russia did in the past.

Also, if Ukraine would surrender without fight it would definitely embolden them to repeat this trick on other countries. And sooner or later there would be a war, worst case scenario is NATO dissolving, with direct NATO-Russia war being also quite bad thing.

Every weapon given to them prolongs the conflict by X amount

I believe you vastly overestimate Russian resources. The war is absolutely winnable for Ukraine + Western aid combination. If Ukrainians were more directly assisted or given even more advanced long-range toys, it'd have been winnable quickly. But alas, nuclear blackmail (increasingly non-credible) and so on, so they'll keep throwing men into the grinder, getting closer to the objective very slowly and at a staggering cost.

You know, there's the issue with the proposal of distant appeasers which isn't well understood, I imagine. You still live in 2022, if not in 1980s like some Chomsky. But this is late 2023. The war has not just eroded Russian credibility as a military power or a rational agent in the international arena, screw that – it has eroded the credibility of the state itself. It has become a clown show worse than any pro-Western transgender performance. Yes, muh "Ukraine is corrupt shithole failed state" is a cope, Russian rule has become an unambiguously worse option, and not only for nationalist reasons as it could be believed in 2004 or so. The thin, see-through veneer of "based traditional Orthodox white nation" or whatever, which still held for some delusional people, has cracked. It's a feudal absurdity that puts patriots in prison and has to cowardly assassinate near-successful insurrectionists after loudly pardoning them, an ostensibly democratic and by all appearances authoritarian polity where some Muslim warlord's fat son pummels insufficiently obsequious citizens and law enforcement sticks their tongues into their asses, as we put it, a superpower of wounded soldiers forgotten on tarp under the sun, propagandists who don't even try anymore, every promise broken. It cannot credibly offer you prosperity or freedom, but also cannot guarantee you peace and stability. It is no longer capable of bribing anyone into obedience, not even the most naive Eastern Ukrainians of Russian descent who have survived the last two years.

It is virtually politically impossible for Ukraine to give up on restoring at least 2021 effective borders, and for the West to give up on Ukraine.

nuclear blackmail (increasingly non-credible)

You think Putin would not start nuking things if the Ukranians were advancing across the boarder and throwing conventional cruise missiles at targets in the interior?

Yes, this is what ardent supporters of the Ukraine basically believe, unironically. Namely that, in the end, all Ukrainians lands can and will be liberated by force, and that either Putler will not dare to escalate the war so as to avoid complete defeat, or that whoever replaces him after a palace coup, revolution etc. will not dare either. You’d think that basing your entire policy on this assumption is lunacy, but this is where we’re at.

Incidentally I observed the same attitude when Trump ordered missile strikes on Syrian military bases back in 2017 and 2018. There were reasonable people who made the argument that launching cruise missiles at military targets in a country where Russian anti-aircraft and air force units are present might result in rather dangerous escalation if any of those units are hit by mistake. A bunch of people on the net immediately waved these concerns off and trivialized the whole issue, saying “nah, everybody involved is just posturing, it’s just bullshit, if anything happens, they’ll just sort it out in some backroom deal”. But based on their opinions voiced before, it was clear that what they actually mean is “nah, the Moskal will not dare to do anything”. It was clear that yes, they actually believed that the Russkies will not actually respond if their units are “accidentally” smashed by cruise missiles.

Russia isn’t going to nuke Washington DC or New York if the Ukrainians fire some missiles into the interior, and in any case they don’t have the manpower to attempt a land invasion or anything close to it. But I don’t think @DaseindustriesLtd is a particularly ill informed NAFO shill and, in any case, I’d wager he knows more about Russia than you.

You're right, but that's not what I've meant. It's conceivable that the Russians would deploy nuclear weapons against Ukrainian units if the collapse of the Crimean front seems imminent.

I have actually bet money, on terms that seemed favorable, on Russia nuking major bridges over Dnieper (yes, including Kiev), more than a year ago. You can imagine how it went.

Anyway, the most important question is: does the US need to make totally sure that Russia won't nuke Ukraine? Because I think "oh shit, Russians have nuked Ukraine in desperation" is not the worst piece of news for the State Department.

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You think Putin would not start nuking things if the Ukranians were advancing across the boarder and throwing conventional cruise missiles at targets in the interior?

Why cruise missiles, why this specific modality of escalation and not any other? I mainly meant more drones for the interior, but even for missiles, what does it matter?

Reminder: Russian interior is being routinely attacked now. Sometimes it's an entire border region being wrecked, sometimes it's a military airfield many hundreds of kilometers from the border, sometimes it's Moscow proper, and not just «a building» but a part of the city's business core, where progressive and corrupt Muskovites exchange crypto for USD under the watchful eye of FSB minders on a direct line to their Seychelles office, a sacred place. Sometimes it's straight up Kremlin. Ukrainians are routinely destroying infrastructure, have assassinated more than one propagandist near the heart of Russia, and in general are acting with complete brazen confidence that Putin is a bluffing bitch ruling a pyramid of treachery, grift and sheer indifference. What is the reason to believe otherwise? Answer me honestly, would you have anticipated two years ago that all this can be done to the Second Strongest Military Superpower without triggering the Judgement Day?

No, I am not 100% sure there is no level of attack which will trigger a nuclear response. But I am mostly confident it's not about Russia. Touch Kabayeva's child, Shoygu or Zolotov, you'll risk a great deal. Leave them alone and you're free to win the war by any means available. Even nuking major cities might not be off limits. Putin does not give a shit about much of anything geopolitical, he's shallower than a right-wing Twitter influencer, has no commitments and values his own life dearly.

@Botond173, do you have any argument except a sneer that looks to be frozen since 26/02/2022, when steel columns of Russian forces were advancing towards Kiev?

It was clear that yes, they actually believed that the Russkies will not actually respond if their units are “accidentally” smashed by cruise missiles.

And? Where's the punchline that teaches us how they were wrong and you were right?

The cruise missile strikes were accurate enough that no Russian units were hit. We know that. But it was possible for things to go a different way. Thankfully we didn't have to learn if those critics were right or not.

I recall a quip from an acquaintance or maybe a channel in Telegram that "Ukrainians deliberately struck the Moscow skyscrapers outside of working hours because they were afraid of Retaliation otherwise". I suppose the Red Line is now at "you can drone our capital as long as you don't accidentally kill anyone".

It was "advancing across the border" and cruise missiles -- with the advancing being the most important part. I do think if American cruise missiles were in frequent use by Ukraine rather than whatever bullshit they have cobbled together at the moment things would be considerably twitchier.

The point being that the fact that nothing so far has happened that approaches (what I imagine to be) Russia's nuclear threshold does not make me feel comfortable that the threshold does not exist somewhere in the near-ish possibility space.

Dollars to donuts, if we'd given the Ukrainians our entire arsenal the week the war started the current situation would not be different by more than 10%.

Please do not put words in my mouth - Russia is not the good guy. Ukraine is not the good guy. They're both essentially shitholes except now one is being propped up with my tax dollars for some reason. I would never choose to live in either.

As much as the war has eroded Russian credibility, it's eroded US and NATO credibility. We put sanctions on Russia and... well that doesn't seem to have collapsed their economy as promised, does it. We fed Ukraine all this training and money and materiel for a massive summer offensive and... basically nothing was accomplished.

Now BRICS countries have a wedge to build a non-Dollar denominated global trade system. Now we've shown China that THE ENTIRETY OF NATO, US INCLUDED, can't produce enough munitions to match Russia in a large regional war. What exactly have we gained here? How are we going to gain? I don't see how Ukraine even gets back to status quo antebellum without NATO boots on the ground and planes in the sky. And then we're in a shooting war with a nuclear weapons state, which is terrible enough that I will fight to avoid it at all costs. AND FOR WHAT? FOR WHAT? Some Eastern European mudhole?

Zelensky is losing support. Also seems to realize that a stalemate that bleeds both Ukraine and Russia dry is not unpleasant outcome for his western allies. He also started to believe the fiction about himself up to the point where Poland had to subtly hint last week that he is going over the top.

He behaves as if someone owes him something and that is definitely annoying some powerful people. So I think he is running out of good moves and trying to cash whomever has some prestige left.

Ukraine is definitely losing the hearts and minds lately. And the pro ukrainian twitter is very vocal in abrasive way with hints of desperation in the last couple of weeks.


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