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Glenn Greenwald has written up a good Twitter thread on the EU's proposed new draconian censorship laws. The pretext is that Slovakia's recent election resulted in a guy who has promised to end all Ukraine aid to end up winning it. This is all apparently due to "misinformation". Clearly when the voters have the wrong viewpoints, they must be treated with extra doses of correct thinking and anyone who deviates from it should summarily be punished. The law itself moves the onus onto the social media companies.
So if you think the era of censorship is over, think again. It's not just the EU. The Canadian parliament is also preparing something similar.
The most banal observation is that a system that is confident in its own survival does not need repression. The obvious implication is that the people running the system are not confident in their grip on power and in Europe in particular the big structural trend will be ever-increasing illegal migration once the Ukraine war passes. I suspect this censorship law will be used vigorously to deplatform anyone critical of the loose border policies the EU is promoting.
It's funny because we've long read about people in repressive societies like Iran, Turkey or China using VPN services to get around censorship by the regime. Might we get something similar in Europe in the not-too-distant future? I should add that I am not too pessimistic. People have tasted (relative) freedom and will not go back to the old regime. The rise of alternatives like Rumble is directly linked to increasing political repression on YouTube. Even outright totalitarian systems like the Soviet Union did not succeed in brainwashing their population. I've always felt that Aldous Huxley's dystopian vision of cheap entertainment to distract the masses was a better analogy to the Western elite's preferred methods of control over the more stereotypical 1984 vision that Orwell laid out. But clearly there are limits to how much you can distract people and now the gloves are coming off.
I actually agree with them that this is “misinformation”.
And the war goals have been closer to this https://twitter.com/thestudyofwar/status/1708897470158160151?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ
But the powers that be are going in a direction far worse with censorship. Yes the regime is not secure. I don’t understand Europes immigration policies at all. The regime has a lot of bad policy.
“Misinformation” can mean anything. Sometimes the regime is in a position that I believe is correct Sbf sometimes wrong but disagreeing is always misinformation.
The problem with the current discussion around “misinformation” is that it explicitly couches disagreement with the narrative as misinformation. Even if Putin wants a peace deal, it doesn’t follow that anyone who comes to a similar conclusion is falling for misinformation. In most contexts as it’s actually used, it’s much more accurate to replace misinformation with crime-think as it’s basically come to mean nothing more or less than disagreement with the regime.
There are plenty of good reasons to be reluctant to back Ukraine. The war is effectively at stalemate, there aren’t any large swathes of territory changing hands. Putin might well consider nukes if he’s backed into a corner or fears losing power. There the cost involved and that money not being available to cover all kinds of pressing domestic problems (and the resulting loss of social trust may be just as bad if not worse. Consider how residents of Maui feel about watching billions lavished on Ukraine and getting little help themselves). There’s Taiwan as well, which is, at least to me a much bigger strategic issue because of chip manufacturing that they do and no one else does.
There are reasons to stay. But to me, suggesting that only those who have fallen for misinformation have issues with continuing blank check support for Ukraine is really not an argument as the internet says. It’s simply a smear against any dissidents who aren’t toeing the line and happily munching chicken Kyiv.
In this case I think misinformation is appropriately used though it’s tough. Because I don’t see any offer of a peace deal. If there was evidence that you could do a ceasefire at todays lines then it would not be misinformation. Sure the war is at a stalemate but where is the evidence that if Ukraine quit fighting Russia would agree to quit fighting (along with a Korea style border). None.
If you said allow Russia the whole of Ukraine and take peace that would be accurate information and an honest opinion.
The one thing I’ve been thinking about is Europe should be footing nearly the full bill for this war. It really isn’t Americas job to protect Europe at least as the first line of defense. Germany and France should be paying full freight.
I think it's a bit easy to say there's no evidence negotiation would work when it's not really been attempted at all.
Maybe Putin just thinks he can outlast Ukrainian manpower and wouldn't bite now but it's hard to say when the best offer he's been given is to give back everything Crimea included.
Nobody has been seriously talking about peace since Minsk and as the Germans blabbered even that wasn't really serious.
Has Putin made an offer? Your giving no agency to him.
The defending side literally doesn’t have agency to end the war. Only the invader can offer peace.
I don't disagree with you there. Though we're not privy to all details of course.
I believe he floated a DMZ solution before the counteroffensive, but that's certainly too vague to count.
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